I am a graduate student in the microbiology and molecular genetics program. I have an engineering degree in Biotechnology from Manipal Institute of technology, Karnataka India. Sparked by an interest in studying infectious diseases I decided to work as a research assistant at Genext Genomics, an animal biotechnology startup in India, where I worked on characterizing a novel protein in Mycobacterium tuberculosis which was found to be essential for its growth.

Taking a detour from engineering, I decided to get a masters in Biomedical Sciences from Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Newark. At Newark, I worked with Dr Yuri Bushkin and Dr Sanjay Tyagi to study the T cell response to various antigen stimulants using single molecule mRNA FISH and Flow cytometry. I also worked on developing a technique to quantify the mRNA transcripts per cell using data from flow cytometry and smFISH. Studying T cells got me interested in noise in gene expression since it was clear from my experiments that cells with the same phenotype and functions responded with a heterogeneous amount of mRNA molecules per cell leading me into the world of noise and stochastic gene expression.

Which brings me to the Shah lab, where I aim at studying the underlying mechanisms of noise in gene expression using my FISH/Flow skills and some rudimentary programming skills from undergrad. I also enjoy baking, cooking, working out, gardening and going to the “city” when I am not sciencing.