Post-doctoral Fellows

Nilisha Rastogi is a structure biologist with a Ph.D. (2018) in Biophysics from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, where she trained under Prof. T. P. Singh and Prof. Sujata Sharma. Her research expertise lies in elucidating structure–function relationships of therapeutically important proteins, with a strong interest in understanding how gene expressions translate to protein structures and functions in order to uncover the molecular etiology of diseases.

She served as a DHR–Young Scientist Postdoctoral Fellow (September 2022–September 2025) at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, where her research focused on structure-based drug targeting of the Zika virus NS1 protein, including the development of peptide-based and small-molecule inhibitors guided by structural insights.

Previously, she was a SERB–National Postdoctoral Fellow (June 2019–December 2021) at the ICMR–National Institute of Pathology, New Delhi, where she conducted structural and biophysical investigations of unique signature proteins from Mycobacterium tuberculosis with diagnostic and therapeutic potential. This work resulted in high-impact publications and was internationally recognized with the IUCr Rising Star Award 2024 by International Union of Crystallography, the award is given to young scientists as emerging leaders in the field of protein crystallography.

Dr. Rastogi is the recipient of several prestigious honors, including the Dr. S. V. Talekar Medal for Best Ph.D. Thesis (AIIMS) in 2019. She has also received the Excellent Student Award at Nagoya, Japan in 2015 for outstanding research contributions and the Dr. Arun Fotedar Memorial Award for publishing the best Ph.D. research paper in 2014 by AIIMS – New Delhi. She has qualified All India Entrance for both CSIR-NET and ICMR-JRF for full-time doctoral research.