Research

The goal of my Ph.D. thesis project is to gain an understanding of how the vertebrate embryonic forebrain acquires the adult shape and form. This project will be carried out in collaboration with Prof. Sumit Basu in the Mechanical Engineering Department of IIT Kanpur. It will involve the development of a three-dimensional in silico model to understand the forces that drive the formation of the two cerebral hemispheres in the chick embryo. I propose to take images of the slices of the developing chick forebrain. The computational analysis of these two-dimensional images will be used to establish the three-dimensional geometry of the in silico model. The predictions of model would then be validated through molecular manipulations carried out in the chick embryo. Other avenues of modelling the three dimensional architecture of the chick forebrain to render a volume rendered solid mesh model are also being explored. I am also interested to explore cell adhesion molecules and mesenchymal factors playing a role in vertebrate forebrain dorsal roofplate invagination.