I am a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Mark Stopfer, at NICHD-NIH. Our lab is interested in how the external world, probed by the sensory organs, is represented in the brain. I focus on olfaction, i.e. the sense of smell, in simple organisms like insects. Using electrical recordings, behavioral observations, imaging, and theoretical modeling, we are exploring how the sensory information, before it generates behavior and memory, is processed and reformatted by the neural circuits in the tiny, but marvelous, brain of an insect. Previously, I did a brief stint as a post-doc in the cognitive neuroscience lab of Prof. Adam Aron in the department of Psychology at UCSD. Using magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the human brain, we studied the influence of urges - for food or money - on the motor system in the time period preceding action. In 2009, I received Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology working with Prof. Pavel Pevzner at UCSD, where I developed computational approaches for analyzing mass spectrometry data, and applied them to extract multiple types of information about the proteins present in a biological sample - their location (gene annotation), cuts (neuropeptides, methionine excision, signal peptides, regulatory proteolysis) or modification by various chemicals attachments (PTMs). This work has contributed to the nascent field of Proteogenomics. As an undergraduate, I studied computer science at IIT Kanpur (Class of 2004), and interned in computational biology labs at NCBS Bangalore and Lund University. Misc. In free time, I enjoy pondering over philosophy (particularly Vedanta). I made small contributions to social work through NGOPost, Shiksha Sopan and Udai, and created a web application for writing in Hindi. |
