Timesh
Timesh Pillay, was a 2021 intake into the Crick doctoral clinical fellow programme in Katrin Rittinger’s lab.
After medical school, I was doing clinical and epidemiological research in spare moments, and gaining an interest in academic work. I was lucky to join Ajit Lalvani's lab at Imperial, where I applied my clinical skills and developing my understanding of clinical cohorts. I wanted to develop skills in fundamental science, and the Crick PhD programme offered this. In 2021, I join two non-clinical labs, Katrin Rittinger’s at the Crick, and Teresa Thurston’s lab, which was at Imperial at the time.
It was difficult. I was learning so many new things at a stage of my career where my peers were specialising and going on to consultant positions. The science was challenging, and my lofty expectations came up against the reality: reproducible relevant scientific discovery is hard. I experienced failure regularly. However, coming out of this process my view of science, and the world, has completely changed. I feel able to ask questions relevant to human health with an understanding of the scientific tools available to answer them. This is incredibly exciting.
In 2025, I started an academic clinical lectureship at UCL, which allows me 50% academic and 50% clinical time over four years, and I joined a cutting-edge tuberculosis lab run by Max Gutierrez, again at the Crick.
TB is a disease that I’ve always been interested in clinically, and I can start to see my clinical and academic worlds aligning. I’m looking forward to applying my skills in laboratory science to this deadly pathogen, with the aim of making discoveries that improve human health.
