Vaithish Velazhahan

About Vaithish Velazhahan

Born in Manhattan, Kansas, to parents from Tamil Nadu, India, Vaithish Velazhahan spent his childhood in India where he nurtured a curiosity for science and medicine and played basketball and chess for his school team. A United States citizen by birth, Vaithish had to relocate to the US on his own to pursue his dream of studying medicine. Returning to Kansas, Vaithish experienced firsthand the financial, emotional, and social difficulties often accompanying the immigrant experience, all while navigating these obstacles without the support and presence of his parents. 

Unable to transfer any credits from his prior advanced coursework in India, Vaithish had to repeat several classes at Kansas State University (KSU). Vaithish actively engaged in local community service work that allowed him to develop long-lasting bonds with fellow volunteers and learn the American way of life through service and spirituality. 

At KSU, Vaithish found his passion for research. He conceived and took on an independent project to study how dietary flavonoids could help prevent cancer, which led to a first-authored manuscript and was recognized with Barry Goldwater Scholarship and multiple NSF and NIH-funded grants. This experience motivated him to become a physician-scientist. 

Vaithish pursued his PhD at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar where he developed new techniques to determine the first high-resolution structures of G protein-coupled receptors from fungi, culminating in two first-authored manuscripts published in the journal Nature and the Max Perutz Student Prize for outstanding PhD thesis. This work was featured on the cover page of Alberts’ Molecular Biology of the Cell seventh edition textbook and Trends in Pharmacological Sciences journal of CellPress. Vaithish was also elected a Fellow at Caius College, Cambridge, to establish an independent research program on GPCRs at the level of junior faculty, an honor bestowed upon 4 out of over 650 applicants annually. 

Vaithish is currently pursuing MD training at Stanford where he is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and conducts independent neuro-immuno-oncology research aimed at innovative therapeutic development. Vaithish is also passionate about global health access and has worked with MEDLIFE in Peru and Ecuador and founded the nonprofit We Save in India, which develops technology to connect doctors with underserved patients.