I am interested in understanding the diversity and distribution of diatoms across the Indian subcontinent. My research revolves around understanding the patterns and process control of the past of present-day diatoms.

I also use diatoms to decipher the past and present environmental conditions and explore diatoms for various biotechnological applications.

I am taking care of D3's lab and Diatom herbarium at Agharkar Research Institute. Our current holding is around 3000 samples originates across the Indian subcontinent. I am proud to be associated with the only diatom herbarium of India and probably the biggest diatom collection across South Asia. Our collection also holds H. P. Gandhi's (1952-2002) type specimens and all his original materials. 

I am also involved in many other ongoing projects of our laboratory.

My research encompasses understanding the current diatom diversity and their relationship with various environmental variables, shaping their distribution as well as reconstructing the fossil diatom flora from the ecosystem inside the biodiversity hotspot of the Western Ghats. 

With these objectives, my study rotates around to understand the role of “diatoms” as a tool to establish the present as well as the past climatic history of a unique ecosystem in the Western Ghats region in order to achieve their effective management and conservation.

I love sweet food and I come from Kutch

Google Scholar

I am curious to assess the bio-geography, intending to document what species grow where, their genetic relatedness and what is the patterns of distribution, addressing the explanations for these geographical patterns using MICROBES!

With this framework, I am trying to understand the evolutionary origin and systematics along with the bio-geography of the selected group of diatoms from the Indian subcontinent using molecular phylogenetic tools.

I'm a cinephile, fond of cooking and dancing! I hail from Latur.

Google Scholar

I am a PhD student and Junior project fellow under the All India Coordinated Project on Taxonomy of MoEF & CC.

I am interested in understanding the diversity of diatoms across the environmental gradients and exploring the possibilities of application in water quality monitoring. 

I am in the process of developing diatom based pollution monitoring protocols for water quality managers.

My interests range from politics to cinema!

Google Scholar

I am a CSIR junior research fellow, pursuing PhD and my research interests, in a nutshell, includes documenting the diatom diversity and distribution in order to assess the health status of different sites of selected water bodies.

I am also interested in analyzing my morphological studies with molecular techniques such as metabarcoding to know the possibility of an easier technique, thereby making information easily available to the water quality managers.

I am also a trained classical singer and I come from Odissa