A native of Brentwood, Tenn., Rosy Kannankeril comes to the St. Jude Graduate School after earning a degree in cell and molecular biology from Union University.
Kannankeril began her research career in the fall of 2023 in the Thierfelder Lab at Union University where she studied the transcriptional regulation of the enzyme deiodinase-3 (DIO3) and its role in suppressing tumor metastasis. She then spent the summers of 2024 and 2025 as an undergraduate researcher in the Glazer Lab at Vanderbilt University, where they studied and characterized genetic variants in cardiac ion channels as pathogenic or benign. Her projects focused on the manual validation of trafficking scores on subsets of variants.
Her senior capstone research project in the Thierfelder Lab explored the transcriptional regulation of microglial potassium and calcium channels in response to amyloid-beta stimulation in an effort to determine the precise role of these channels in Alzheimer’s Disease. As a graduate student at St. Jude, Kannankeril plans to study the role of transcriptional or translational regulators in pediatric diseases.
Adding to her rich experience, Kannankeril also completed a study abroad program in the United Kingdom for a biotechnology course where she visited sites of historic and modern biomedical discovery.
As an undergraduate, Kannankeril quickly realized the potential biomedical research has to impact patients and families, and sought to pursue a career where her work as a research scientist could serve people directly. Through her undergraduate research mentor Dr. Thierfelder, Kannankeril learned about the St. Jude Graduate School Biomedical Sciences PhD program, and could not have imagined a better place to pursue graduate education. She noted how St. Jude has remarkably direct bench to bedside research opportunities, excellent training resources for students, and, most importantly, a longstanding commitment to valuing every patient and family they serve.
Hometown: Brentwood, TN
Education:
2026 BS, Cell and Molecular Biology, Union University
Awards/Honors/Scholarships:
2026 Academic Excellence Award for Cell and Molecular Biology major, Union University
2025 Inducted Member and Grant Recipient, Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society
2022-26 Honors Community Member, Union University