Sunil Ahuja, M.D.

Dr. Sunil Ahuja’s research is focused on characterization of the host determinants of immunologic health. His work has been supported through both federal (e.g. NIH, Veterans Administration (VA) Center grants, DoD) and non-federal (e.g. Doris Duke) agencies. Dr. Ahuja has received the NIH MERIT award, the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award, Burroughs Wellcome Clinical Scientist in Translational Research award and Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Scientist award. He has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Association of Physicians. Dr. Ahuja serves as the Director of VA Center for AIDS and HIV Infection and VA Center for Personalized Medicine. The Centers represent a nodal point for cross-fertilization of ideas from a multi-disciplinary group of investigators from the VA, University affiliates and the DoD. The Centers house Illumina-based equipment for conducting GWASs and next-generation sequencing studies.  Dr. Ahuja also serves as Director for Research Enhancement Programs in the Vice-President for Research Office.  His team has a strong track record of successful and productive research in multi-disciplinary projects and ability to conduct large-scale genetic, genomic, immunologic and translational research related to infectious, immune and inflammatory diseases (e.g. allergy/asthma, HIV, and autoimmunity). Studies from his group have been consistently published in top-tier journals (Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Immunology, PNAS, NEJM, JAMA-Internal Medicine, JACI, Blood) and are widely cited. He is passionate about training the next generation of researchers and has extensive experience in research training and mentoring at the high school (>200), undergraduate (139), graduate (20), medical (16) student, post-doctoral (28) and faculty levels (17) with equal opportunity given to qualified trainees that are underrepresented in the sciences.