Parnika Mukherjee, PhD

Biography

Parnika graduated from PES Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Biotechnology. In 2014, she moved to Berlin, Germany, to pursue her Master of Science degree in Bioinformatics at Freie Universität Berlin.

She completed her doctoral studies in a dual-degree PhD program established between Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Australian National University in Canberra, IRTG2290: “Crossing Boundaries: Molecular Interactions in Malaria”. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Emanuel Heitlinger (HUB) and Dr. Gaétan Burgio (ANU), she explored host-Plasmodium interactions in malaria using publicly available RNA-sequencing datasets.

In 2021, Parnika joined the group of Prof. Dr. med. Leif Erik Sander in the Department of Infectious Diseases, Respiratory Medicine and Critical Care Medicine at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. As a staff bioinformatician, she analysed omics data and applied machine learning methods to support research into infectious diseases, including COVID-19, malaria and pneumonia.

Parnika joined the Boztug Laboratory in 2026 as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research focuses on the mechanisms underlying inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) associated with immune-related actinopathies in patients with inborn errors of immunity (IEIs). Using spatial omics to study intestinal tissue, she investigates how these disorders shape cellular organisation and inflammatory processes in the gut.

Outside of work, she is interested in pen-and-ink drawing and calligraphy.