Research Profile

I completed my doctoral research in the area of integrative computational analysis for Meta-genomics at the Ulster University, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom on Research Fund Horizon 2020 scholarship granted by the Ulster University. I rounded off my academic journey further by getting funding from the Marie Curie fellowship under Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) Scheme for the Meta-plat project, which focused on analyzing microbial genomes for improving the nutritive value and cattle productivity in European boundaries under European Horizon Commission 2020. I actively participated in joint research, secondment and innovation activities between the member organizations of the project in the U.K. and Ireland. I also participated in research development activities at Ulster University, United Kingdom. I authored several publications. Also, serving as reviewer of the research submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

Microbes are our indispensable companions. Understanding the composition, diversity, and functioning of microbial communities is vital to the sustainability of life. The microbial signatures have implications and applications in biological sciences. Use cases of my research are related to human health (Human Microbiome Project) and agricultural sciences with cattle productivity (MetaPlat Project). Microbiome data is large, complex, and biologically rich. My doctoral research aimed at developing efficient computational models for analyzing quantitative microbial genes to associate them with phenotypes by integrating knowledge on their inter- relationships from the phylogenetic tree of microbial life. This kind of analysis aids in identifying novel microbial genes and studying their environmental impact (e.g., correlation of human gut bacteria with diseases such as IBD) with important breakthroughs. The broad area of my research is integrating biological domain knowledge in determining functions of microbial profiles. As a part of my PhD thesis, the relationships and structure were liked to functional profiles using heuristics. With this aim, I designed computational models providing solutions in an efficient, sustainable & usable manner .

Research Project

Contributed towards the MetaPlat under European Horizon 2016-2020 which aims on agricultural sciences by providing actionable insights into probiotic supplement usage, methane production and feed conversion efficiency in cattle. The MetaPlat project aimed to develop a metagenomic platform for agricultural sciences that could handle cattle rumen metagenomics data sequences well and could produce in-depth analysis to facilitate researchers in their understanding of data generated from cattle rumen samples. This was a tremendous opportunity to collaborate and develop a MetaPlat Simplicity pipeline. During my involvement with the project, I received grant from Marie Curie fellowship of approx. 2000 Euros per month to bear the expenses during my research secondments.