Dr. Nissi Varki obtained her primary medical degree at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, one of the foremost medical institutions in South-East Asia, and became US Board Certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, following pathology residencies at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, and St. Louis, Missouri. She went on to acquire postdoctoral training in tumor immunology, first at Washington University in St. Louis, and then at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic in San Diego. After a short stint on the faculty in the Department of Pathology at UCLA, she moved to UCSD in 1985. After of period of NIH-funded basic research on the mechanisms of cancer metastasis, she started up four histopathology core laboratories at UCSD, helping investigators analyze normal and diseased tissues, particularly those from genetically altered mice.

Dr. Varki serves on the School of Medicine Recruitment and Admissions Executive Committee and teaches sophomore medical students. She also teaches immunohistochemistry and histopathology to medical and graduate postdoctoral fellows, and helps students attain histotechnology certification. She also teaches an elective course for graduate and medical students entitled “Practical Histopathology in Mouse Models of Human Disease.” In recent years, she has focused her expertise in immunohistology and pathology towards comparisons of humans and great apes, our closest evolutionary cousins, discovering several differences that of are of known or potential biomedical importance.