Vijay - extended

Dr. Vijay Raghavendran is a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Sheffield, where he works with Prof. Ipsita Roy on bacterial cellulose and polyhydroxyalkanoates in an EU funded project. He grew up in South India and graduated with honours in Chemical Engineering from NIT Durgapur and an MRes in Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology from IIT Delhi. After his postgraduation, he worked at BISR, a non-profit science institute for 1.5 years before moving to Copenhagen to pursue a PhD with Professors Jens Nielsen and Lisbeth Olsson at DTU, where he worked on glucose metabolism in yeast. After his PhD, he spent a short time as a postdoctoral researcher at UPenn, Philadelphia, before becoming a high school teacher for eight years at an international boarding school in England. In 2014, he decided to come back to research and this took him to Brazil where he worked on sugarcane ethanol, and to Sweden where he worked on ethanol from woody biomass using a novel pretreatment technique. He arrived at the University of Sheffield in 2018 to work on yeast propagation and fermentation using microbubbles that could reduce the cost of production of starter yeasts significantly. Since April 2020, he has been working on bacterial polymers for bulk and biomedical applications.

Qualifications

2005: PhD, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

1999: M.S Research, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India

1997: BEng Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India

Career History

2018 - current: Research associate, TUoS, Sheffield

2016 - 2017: Postdoctoral Researcher, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

2014 - 2016: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

2006 - 2014: Teacher of Chemistry, Brockwood Park School, UK

2005 - 2006: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Pennsylvania, USA

1999 - 2001: Research Scientist, Birla Institute of Scientific Research, Jaipur, India

Career Interests

Lignocellulosic ethanol production; biopolymers, strain optimisation, waste to products, yeast sugar metabolism; STEM education; mathematics for biologists; yeast physiology; science communication

Selected Publications

A simple scaled down system to mimic the industrial production of first generation fuel ethanol in Brazil. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, July 2017. doi: 10.1007/s10482-017-0868-9

Hap4 is not essential for activation of respiration at low specific growth rates in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Journal of Biological Chemistry, May 2006. doi: 10.1074/jbc.M512972200

Teaching microbial physiology using glucose repression phenomenon in baker's yeast as an example. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, November 2005. doi: 10.1002/bmb.2005.49403306404

Full list of publication can be found at:

http://www.researcherid.com/rid/G-6425-2015