 She then became the first foreign graduate of the medical residency program at Tufts-New England Medical Center.After completing a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of California at San Francisco hospitals, including San Francisco General Hospital (now Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center), Ramakrishnan completed postdoctoral work in Stanley Falkow's lab at Stanford University, where she developed the strategy of using "Mycobacterium marinum" infection in zebrafish as a model for tuberculosis.In 2001, Ramakrishnan joined the faculty of the University of Washington, where she worked both as a basic scientist and infectious diseases physician.