Dr. Prabhakaran is an Academic Surgical Oncology Faculty member of the University of New Mexico and an Associate Member of the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center with clinical and research focus on breast malignancies. After finishing her Surgical Oncology Fellowship at Moffitt Cancer Center, she completed 2 years of Translational Research Fellowship. Her research focuses on predictive biomarkers of treatment response and the genomic basis of disparities in breast cancer. She was a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Diabetes Institute of Immunology and Transplantation at the University of Minnesota and studied auto-islet cell transplantation in patients undergoing pancreatectomy and the use of omental scaffolding for islet transplants.

She served as Junior Investigator on the NCI Breast Cancer Steering Committee Immuno-Oncology Task Force and was selected as an emerging leader in Immuno-oncology by SITC to attend their inaugural Women in Cancer Immunotherapy Network Leadership Institute in August 2019. Dr. Prabhakaran serves as the current Vice-Chair of the SITC Surgery Committee, to become the Chair in 2026. In addition to these roles, she is the Cancer Liaison Physician of the Cancer Committee at UNMCCC and was awarded the Cancer Liaison Physician Outstanding Performance Award by the Commission on Cancer in 2021. She mentors medical students, residents and fellows and has received multiple teaching award recognitions.