Curriculum Vitae

Professional Experience

Assistant Professor (Chemistry), New Jersey City University (2019-present)

Postdoctoral researcher (Biophysics), INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier (2014-2019)

Postdoctoral researcher (Physics), New Jersey Institute of Technology (2013)

EDUCATION

Ph.D. (Biochemistry), Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

  Advisor: Dr. Ronald M. Levy

  Fellowship(s): Funding: University graduate fellowship

M.Sc. (Biotechnology), Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

  Thesis advisor: Dr. Ritu Barthwal

  Fellowship: Institute graduate fellowship

B.Sc. (Botany), S.D.N.B. Vaishnav College (University of Madras) India

  Accomplishments: Gold medal in Zoology, Ranked fifth at the state level

RESEARCH INTERESTS/EXPERIENCE

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE 

INRS – Institut Armand-Frappier, Laval, QC, Canada

Postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Nicolas Doucet, (2014-2019)

Quantitative characterization of the conformational sub-states of the pancreatic-type ribonuclease enzyme superfamily.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), TN, USA

Visiting scholar with Dr. Pratul K. Agarwal, September 2014

Computational simulations using GPUs and supercomputing facility at ORNL.

New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA

Postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Cristiano L. Dias, 2012-2013

Exploring the free energy landscape for the formation of beta-sheet conformations, with implications in structural transitions involved in protein misfolding and aggregation.

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA

Graduate Student with Prof. Ronald M. Levy, 2005-2012 

Investigation of the Conformational Characteristics of the Intrinsically Disordered Protein α-synuclein: A Replica Exchange Molecular Dynamics approach.

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, KA, India

Research Assistant with Prof. N. Srinivasan 2004-2005

Research Projects in Bioinformatics focused on the study of Mycobacterium leprae genome.

Homology modeling of the mutant of γ-C crystallin causing self-aggregation leading to congenital cataract.

Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, UP, India

Masters' research with Prof. Ritu Barthwal, 2003-2004

Research Project: “Conformational Studies of the Complex of Camptothecin and its Analogs with DNA and Topoisomerase 1 using Molecular Operating Environment”.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

2019 (Jan14-April 10) Insight data science fellow at Insight, Toronto, ON, Canada.

2018 (August-December) Biomolecular visualization webapp development as part of the Dash Bio suite of Bioinformatics tools released by Plotly.

2018 (May12-21) Science Outside the Lab North (SOtL North), Ottawa, ON and Montreal, QC, Canada. Competitive selection to participate.

TEACHING AND WRITING EXPERIENCE 

New Jersey City University, NJ, USA

Preparation for Chemistry (CHEM100)

General Chemistry I (CHEM105)

General Chemistry I Laboratory (CHEM1105)

General Chemistry II (CHEM106)

General Chemistry II Laboratory (CHEM1106)

Organic Chemistry I (CHEM207)

Organic Chemistry I Laboratory (CHEM2207)

McGill University, Montréal, QC

Convener, McGill Writing Centre, 2013-2017

Help graduate students develop their scientific writing skills by engaging them in discussing their writing, by facilitating group discussions with peers about their science writing

New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ USA

Graduate Student Mentor, Newark College of Engineering and Society of Women Engineers

Advised 5 graduate and undergraduate students to help them in their scientific and professional development

Student Mentoring:

Mentored graduate (MS) and two high school students for research in Protein Computational Chemistry (Summer 2013)

Trained undergraduate and graduate (Ph.D.) students for research in Protein Computational Chemistry (Fall 2012)

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ USA

Teaching Assistant:

Chemistry 171 - Introduction to General Chemistry Lab (Fall 2006-2011, Spring 2012, Summer 2012)

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

BIOMOLECULAR TOOLSETS

HONORS AND AWARDS 

2019 Insight Data Science scholarship, Insight Data Science Fellowship Program, Toronto, ON, Canada: 1500 CAD

2017 Travel award from PROTEO for participation at the ICMRBS meeting in Dublin: 1500 CAD

2016 Prize for oral presentation at the 9th annual GRASP symposium: $150 CAD

2016 One-year Fondation Armand-Frappier postdoctoral fellowship: $37,790 CAD

2015 2nd prize for poster presentation at the 15th PROTEO annual symposium: 100 CAD

2015 Two-year post-doctoral fellowship from GRASP: 15,000 CAD

2015 Travel award from GRASP for participation at the 29th annual symposium of the Protein Society, Barcelona: 1,500 CAD

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

2009 Travel award from the organizers of the Summer School on “Molecular Simulation and Structure Prediction using CHARMM and the MMTSB Tool Set”, University of San Diego CA, USA: 600 USD

2008 Travel award from the organizers of the Workshop on 'Protein Folding', University of Minnesota MN, USA: 500 USD

2005-2006 University Graduate Fellowship, Joint Program in Molecular Biosciences, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey: 24,000 USD

2004-2005 Wellcome trust funding, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India: 10,000 INR/month

2004 All-India Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - National Eligibility Test (CSIR-NET) qualification for Junior Research Fellowship (JRF), (ID- Life Science 306093) with ranking in the top 5%, India. 

2004 95.38 percentile in the All-India Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). (ID-XL830508), India. 

2002-2004 Institute Scholarship from the Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. 

2002 Ranked 1st in the All-India entrance examination for Plant sciences, conducted by the Hyderabad Central University, India. 

2002 Ranked 13th in the All-India Biotechnology entrance examination conducted by the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

2002 Ranked 8th in the All-India entrance examination conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. 

2001 Ranked 5th in the State-level University ranking for the Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Madras, Chennai, India. 

2000 Gold Medal for proficiency in Zoology (Madras University), B.Sc. Shrimathi Devkunwar Nanalal Bhatt Vaishnav College for Women (S.D.N.B.Vaishnav college).

CONFERENCE AND WORKSHOP PRESENTATION/ PARTICIPATION

2022 Narayanan C. Engaging students through Active learning in Chemistry. ACS MARM 2022. 

2021 Nazarenko Y*, Narayanan C, Ariya PA. Indoor air purifiers in the effort to reduce the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): The advantage of circumferential outflow diffusers. AWMA 114th Annual Conference and Exhibition.

2021 Tran TT*, Narayanan C, Loes AN, Click TH, Pham NT, Letourneau M, Harms MJ, Agarwal PK, Doucet N. Dissecting the Structural and Functional Differences of Eosinophil Ribonucleases Using Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction. Protein Society.

2021 (March 19th) Research presentation entitled “Computational design of novel antimicrobial peptides” at the New York American Chemical Society Spring seminar series.

2019 (May 10th) Poster presentation entitled “Conformational landscape of homologous enzymes with distinct biological functions” at the 19th edition of PROTEO annual symposium, Quebec, QC, Canada.

2018 (August 19-24) Poster presentation entitled “Ligand-induced variations in structural and dynamical properties within an enzyme superfamily” at the XXVIII ICMRBS conference, Dublin, Ireland.

2017 (July 24-27) Oral presentation entitled “Conservation of conformational motions impacting function in an enzyme superfamily” at the 31st annual symposium of the Protein Society, Montreal, Canada.

2017 (July 21) Oral presentation entitled “Conserved motions associated with biological function in an enzyme superfamily” at the QANUC grand opening EPR symposium and workshop, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

2017 (May 18-21) Oral presentation entitled “Correlating dynamical variations and functional diversity in an enzyme superfamily” at the Biomolecular Machines Conference, Banff, AB, Canada.

2017 (April 21-26) Oral presentation entitled “Conformational Motions Impacting Function in an Enzyme Superfamily” at the Experimental Biology conference, Chicago, IL, USA.

2016 (November 21) Oral presentation entitled “Conformational motions affecting function in an enzyme superfamily” at the 9th Annual GRASP symposium, Montreal, QC, Canada.

2016 (June 17-19) Poster entitled “Correlating functional divergence and dynamical variations in the pancreatic-type ribonuclease superfamily” at the Protein Engineering Conference, Ottawa, ON, Canada.

2016 (April 10-15) Poster entitled “Dynamical conservation across the pancreatic-type ribonuclease superfamily” at 57th ENC, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

2015 (November 23) Poster entitled “Characterization of dynamical variations relevant to function in the pancreatic-type ribonuclease superfamily” at the 8th Annual GRASP symposium, Montreal, QC, Canada.

2015 (November 12-14) Poster entitled “Caractérisation des variations dynamiques pertinentes à la fonction dans la superfamille des ribonucléases de type pancréatique” at the Congrès Armand-Frappier, Orford, QC, Canada.

2015 (July 22-25) Poster entitled “Functional implications of co-evolving residue sectors in the Ribonuclease A family” at the 29th annual symposium of the Protein Society.

2015 (June 13-17) Oral presentation entitled “Determination of Functionally Relevant, Co-evolving Residue Sectors in the Ribonuclease A Family” at the 98th Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition.

2015 (May 7-8) Poster entitled “Characterization of functionally-relevant, co-evolving residue sectors in the Ribonuclease A family” at the 15th edition of PROTEO annual symposium, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada.

2014 (November 24) Poster entitled “Determination of functionally-relevant, co-evolving residue sectors in the Ribonuclease A family” at the 7th Annual GRASP symposium, Montreal QC, Canada.

2014 (August 14-15) Summer School Computational Biochemistry, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada

2014 (June 20-22) Protein Engineering Canada Conference, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 

2014 (May 8-9) 14th Proteo annual symposium, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada

2013 (August 28-30) Session chair at the AMMCS conference series minisymposium – Simulations in soft matter and molecular biophysics

2013 (August 28-30) Oral presentation entitled “Structural and Thermodynamic determinants for alpha-helix and beta-hairpin stability” at the AMMCS conference series minisymposium – Simulations in soft matter and molecular biophysics

2013 (April 4) Workshop on “Applying for Faculty Positions” at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. 

2012 (February 24) Poster entitled “Investigation of Statistical and Conformational Characteristics of the Intrinsically Disordered Protein alpha-Synuclein” presented at the recruiting event at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

2011 (August 29) Poster entitled “Investigation of polymeric and Structural properties of the Intrinsically Disordered Protein alpha-Synuclein” presented at the poster session on faculty research for new graduate students at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

2010 (May 4) Molecular Biophysics Minisymposium, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey 

2009 (August 4-7) Summer School on “Molecular Simulation and Structure Prediction using CHARMM and the MMTSB Tool Set”, University of San Diego, CA 

2009 (April 29) Oral Research Presentation at the Molecular Biophysics Minisymposium, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey 

2008 (May 6) Molecular Biophysics Minisymposium, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey 

2008 (January 14-18) IMA Annual Program Year Workshop on “Protein Folding”, University of Minnesota, MN 

2007 (May 4) Molecular Biophysics Minisymposium, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey 

2006 (April 20-21) DIMACS workshop on “Computational/Experimental Approaches to Protein Defects in Human Disease”, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 

2004 (November 5) Workshop on “Molecular Biochemistry of Infectious Diseases”, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

SCHOLARLY SERVICES

2023  Judge, Jersey City Medical Center/RWJBarnabas Health STEM Showcase for the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Biochemistry and Biomedical and Health Sciences categories

2014-present: Journal reviewer - ACS Macromolecules (1 article) PLOS ONE (6), Biomed Research International (1), Elsevier Methods (1), Bioinformatics and Biology Insights (1).

2019 (Oct. 11) Poster judge at the 11th Annual GS-LSAMP/NNJ-B2B STEM Research Conference, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

2017 (November): Session chair at the 10th Annual GRASP Symposium, McGill University, Montreal.

2013 (December): Designed and presented the afternoon session of a workshop entitled “Medical Imaging Stories: Guidelines for Effective Scholarly Communication” for the CREATE-MIA program at McGill University.

2013 (February): Invited Panelist for the event entitled “Got your Ph.D.: Now What?” organized by the Society of Women Engineers and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, New Jersey Institute of Technology.

2013 (February): Judge in the Graduate student poster competition at the 2nd Annual Mini-Conference “Pursuing a Successful Career in Science”, Rutgers, The State University of New Brunswick, NJ.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

English (Advanced)

French (Intermediate)

Tamil (Native)

Hindi (Native)