Chitra Narayanan received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Her doctoral research involved the conformational characterization of the intrinsically disordered protein α-Synuclein, implicated in the pathology of Parkinson’s disease. Her research experience and expertise are in the areas of computational chemistry and structural biology. Chitra's current research involves the application of computational approaches to 1) investigate protein conformational dynamics and allostery, 2) design novel antimicrobial peptides based on human enzymes that display potent antibacterial activities.

• Structural characterization and design of novel antimicrobial peptides

• Intrinsically disordered proteins and neurodegenerative diseases

• Protein misfolding and disease

• Protein and enzyme engineering

• Integrating computational and NMR approaches to characterize enzyme allostery and function

• 2019 Insight Data Science scholarship, Insight Data Science Fellowship Program, Toronto, ON, Canada

• 2017 PROTEO Award to present at the ICMRBS 2018, Dublin, Ireland

• 2016 Oral Presentation Prize at the 9th annual GRASP symposium, QC, Canada

• 2016 Armand-Frappier Postdoctoral Fellowship (one-year), QC, Canada

• 2015 2nd Best Poster Prize for presentation at the 15th PROTEO annual symposium, QC, Canada

• 2015 GRASP Postdoctoral fellowship (two-year), QC, Canada

• 2015 GRASP Award to present at the 29th annual symposium of the Protein Society, Barcelona

• 2013 Award for valuable contributions to the Society of Women Engineers and the NJIT community, New Jersey Institute of Technology