THE RAJAGOPAL LAB
Vladimir Vinarsky, MD
Vlad was born in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and grew up playing tennis and not worrying about life. He came to the United States of America (USA) in 1989. The Soviet Union couldn’t handle his departure and promptly collapsed. Vlad left his hometown of Kharkov, Ukraine and settled in the People’s Republic of California, in the San Francisco Bay area, where he continued to play tennis and not worry about life. He received his BA from UC Berkeley, where he worked in the laboratory of Bruce Ames (of the “Ames Test of Mutagenicity”), studying oxidative stress and aging. He received his medical training at Harvard Medical School. Unable to find anything interesting to research in Boston during medical school, Vlad spent one year in the laboratory of Shannon Odelberg at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, studying the role of MMPs and TIMPs in newt limb regeneration. Vlad completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Columbia University in New York City. He lived in the same apartment building in Washington Heights where Bruce Ames grew up in the 1930s. He is currently a fellow in pulmonary and critical care at the Harvard Combined Fellowship program. His broad research interests include lung development and regeneration. Outside of the lab, he loves reading all stories about Paul Ryan and Melky Cabrera, watching tennis and every other sport, playing all sports, and training his daughter to be a tennis champion.
What drew you to your field?
Tuberculosis.
What do you do when you’re not in the lab?
Commute to and from lab.
Describe Rajagopal lab culture in 3 words:
Complete and utter...