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Meet the New Faculty College Advisor for Sutherland-Watkins: Dr. Celestine Wanjalla, M.D., Ph.D.

Posted by on Thursday, January 30, 2025 in Uncategorized .

by Hannah Giannini (G1)

Dr. Celestine (Celly) Wanjalla M.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Disease within the Department of Medicine. Now, she also serves as a College Faculty Advisor for Sutherland-Watkins College. 

After grabbing coffee at the Starbucks in Medical Center East, Dr. Wanjalla and I sat outside for her interview. My first question was about how she ended up at Vanderbilt, where she became one of our college advisors.
Dr. Wanjalla describes how she grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. Upon completing high school, she was awarded a Kenyan government scholarship to study medicine in Russia. Ultimately, she decided to take a year off to study computer programming at Strathmore College in Kenya before coming to the States and matriculating at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, where her aunt was a PhD candidate. However, she learned that Kansas University Medical School did not accept international students to its program, so she transferred to Cornell University in Ithaca, where she graduated with a degree in biological sciences and honors in research. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant for two years before joining the MD/PhD program at Thomas Jefferson University. Her PhD is in Immunology and microbial pathogenesis. After medical school, she was accepted to the prestigious physician-scientist program at VUMC – a fast-track residency and fellowship. Now, she is a physician-scientist, and her lab studies the role of chronic inflammation in HIV and other viruses in the development and progression of cardiovascular disease.

But why did she become a physician-scientist?
Growing up, Dr. Wanjalla had no doctors in her family but knew she wanted to do medicine. However, she did not know an MD/PhD was an option until she spoke with her collegemate, now lifelong friend and collaborator, Dr. Tecla M. Temu, whose father was a physician at Cornell University. Simply put, Dr. Temu told Dr. Wanjalla that to figure out if she wanted to do an MD/PhD, she needed to find a lab and try her hand at research to see if she liked it. After working in a biochemistry lab at Cornell with the late Dr. Harold Scheraga, she enjoyed research and considered the physician-scientist track in her future. 

Our students are spread out across the phases of training. And we are all facing different challenges depending on where we are in the training pathway. Do you have stage-specific advice?
For everyone she advises “Give yourself grace.”

We all try…but sometimes it’s hard not to get frustrated when you don’t know something,
For our M1s, Dr. Wanjalla says that quizzes and exams are benchmarks for seeing where there are opportunities to grow because it is not the last time students will be encountering a topic. Medical training is so long because there is so much to learn. 

For our M2s, she believes that clerkships are a great opportunity to learn from patients and one another. She encourages students to become part of the team and speak up, especially regarding patient safety. She witnessed this firsthand after she spoke up in the OR as a medical student, which improved the outcomes for the patient who was about to undergo surgery. She stresses that at the end of the day, “caring for the patient is the most important thing and a privilege.” 

For our G-phase students, she mentions the importance of peer mentorship: “It’s important to talk to other students in the lab, both senior and those at the same phase of training. Within established groups, your peers can hold you accountable, for example, to the abstract you said you would submit or remind you about a conference opportunity they are also applying to.” You may have the best PI in the world, but your fellow graduate students can help you reach your fullest potential directly and indirectly. “Having coffee and discussing the experiments that did not work can be very therapeutic.”

When talking about PhD projects, Dr. Wanjalla brought up Bridgerton or Prison Break or your favorite Netflix show.
She explains, “Your project should be like that Netflix show you binge – each day, you should leave the lab wanting to know what will happen next.” She did admit there are points in the PhD when it is difficult to find a plot for the research story you are trying to tell. Something that helped in her PhD was making every piece of data into a figure – give it a legend explain the statistical analysis if there is one. By compiling the data, you can better process the results, determine the next logical step, and decide whether to continue a project. “You are also in a better position to help your mentor help you.”

What makes you want to keep coming back to the lab to do research?
“Growing up in Kenya, I had loved ones who had died from HIV.”

Because she was interested in HIV research, Infectious Disease made the most sense when she applied for the fast-track residency program at Vanderbilt, which involved 2 years of residency and 5 years of fellowship/postdoc. She completed her postdoctoral training with Drs. John Koethe and Dr. Simon Mallal studying adipose tissue T cells and endothelial cell dysfunction in people living with HIV.

As she transitioned to establishing her research program, she began to focus on studying immune cells in the cardiac tissue of HIV patients. This was enabled by her collaboration with Dr. Tarek Absi, a VUMC cardiothoracic surgeon, and Dr. Yan Ru Su, the director of the core laboratory for cardiovascular Translational and Clinical Research. Through this collaboration, she obtains aorta and perivascular adipose tissue from cardiac surgery patients. This is done promptly and made possible due to the infrastructure that has been established for years by Dr. Yan Ru Su.

You are still at the beginning of your career and have already accomplished so much. Where do you see your science heading?
“I’d like to offer the field at least one anti-inflammatory drug that has goes beyond the bench to clinical trials to reduce residual inflammation that is responsible for cardiovascular events in people with and without HIV.”

She explains how multi-omic approaches have enabled intricate methods for pathway discovery. She hopes she can continue to leverage these tools to contribute to the field of cardiovascular disease and the way it is related to inflammation due to HIV and other viruses. 

She describes another goal is to be a good mentor. Currently, Dr. Wanjalla has postdocs and describes her joy whenever they achieve new milestones such as abstract acceptances, great data, any award, and ultimately, the greatest joy will be when they get their dream jobs. She remarks, “If I can grow a research program that does great translational research from bed to bench side and back to the patient and train scientists who are successful in whatever path they choose to do”, that will constitute a successful career. 

A frequent topic that comes up whenever I talk to my classmates is the idea of balancing a successful career while building a family. Can you talk about raising a family while completing your MD/PhD training?
Ultimately, this is a personal choice when starting a family on this career path, but it is feasible if this is what one desires. Her first son, Adrian, was born during graduate school after she had passed her PhD candidacy exam, and her second son, Gabriel, was born after she completed her third year of medical school. She explained how she had an understanding PI who was fine with her working in the lab at night so she could spend time with Adrian during the day. She stressed the importance of a support system, whether it is found in family, friends, the training program, institution, and daycare services. 

Between your career and family, what do you do in your free time? Is there free time?
“I really enjoy cooking and learning new recipes – but mostly on the weekends. My husband cooks on weekdays.”

Dr. Wanjalla also likes hiking, talking with family, and watching movies. As her children have gotten older, much time goes towards attending their sports games or other extracurriculars. She was in the knitting club at Jefferson, the Student National Medical Association, and the graduate school association during medical school. She is also involved in community activities.

Dr. Wanjalla emphasized that we can live a fulfilling life as trainees or assistant professors. She says although times can seem difficult, we can do it. These hard times will come to pass. And how we do life looks different for everyone.