Dr. Thakarar, Associate Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, is an Infectious Disease (ID) and addiction medicine physician with a special interest in health services research. She received a BA in Health and Societies from University of Pennsylvania, DO from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and an MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed internal medicine residency at Cambridge Health Alliance and infectious disease fellowship at Boston Medical Center, where she was part of BU-CHART, an NIH-funded research training program in HIV/AIDS research for underserved populations. She is board-certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and addiction medicine. She is currently an attending physician and on faculty at Maine Medical Center’s ID, addiction medicine, and preventive medicine fellowships.

Her research interests include the infectious disease and substance use syndemic, particularly harm reduction, shared decision making and community-based work. She partners with local syringe services programs for both clinical and research work and is the PI of a SAMHSA harm reduction grant, Project DHARMA (Distribution of Harm Reduction Access in Rural Maine Areas) and . She enjoys mentoring trainees and is the  co-director of the TUSM Scholarly Project Program and co-PI of the NHLBI T35 grant for Maine track medical students.