Science

As a daughter of a physician, a career in the medical field was a foregone conclusion from the elementary school years. Kavitha completed medical school in her home state of West Virginia. During this time she volunteered to help establish a free rural eye hospital in Southern India and explored surgery and dermatology. She ultimately pursued internal medicine for its interesting diagnostic challenges and completed residency training at the University of Pittsburgh. 

For a decade, Kavitha practiced internal medicine with a focus on preventive medicine, nutrition, and geriatrics. She worked in academia in Chicago and New York City, including serving as co-director of an Internal Medicine Residency program, as well as in community hospitals in Florida and Pennsylvania. 

She then spent 17 years in the pharmaceutical industry where she helped bring forward life-changing biologic medications to treat millions of patients around the world with complex immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, such as Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

During this time, she participated in clinical research in the field of Immunology. Areas of focus included investigating benefits and risks of long term therapies and co-morbidities associated with moderate to severe psoriasis and distinctions between biologics with a similar mechanism of action. 

Kavitha has co-authored 25 scientific publications, and four times as many posters on clinical research at scientific congresses. Her scientific bibliography can be found here.