Research Interests
Driven by curiosity and the joys of exploration, navigating through interdisciplinary approaches to uncover the scientific beauty of life and translate the learned into significant contributions that enhance our quality of life and the world we live in!
I am interested in how gene expression noise affects the robust regulatory networks and feedback circuits and how noise propagates to cellular scales, influencing the subcellular dynamics ( cytoskeleton and organelles) that govern the collective behaviors (phenotypes and fitness) and temporal rhythms ( oscillators such as circadian, ultradian) in aging and related diseases, cancer and viral infections using quantitative experiments and computational approaches.
Academic journey
Currently, I am investigating the mechanisms of aging and cell rejuvenation with Dr. Hao Li at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Previously, with Dr. Leor Weinberger at the Gladstone Institutes & UCSF, I worked on (i) experimental and computational approaches to quantify transcriptional noise in mammalian systems in aging, and (ii) data-driven modeling of novel viral therapeutics developed in the lab to dissect the mechanisms and predict the translational potential.
I obtained my PhD in Computational Cellular Biophysics with Dr. Chaitanya Athale at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India. I investigated the mechanistic basis of the microtubule-motor-driven positioning, motility, and self-organized pattern formation in a range of in-vitro and in-vivo systems using quantitative image analysis and computational approaches.
During my Engineering days, I worked on (I) isolating sericin and producing nanoparticles from industry silk waste and the characterization of its anti-microbial properties at R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore, India. (ii) wonderful social amoebae with Prof. Vidyanand Nanjundiah at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. Working on the group dynamics in genotypically heterogeneous groups of Dictyostelium amoebae sparked my fascination with stochasticity, emergence in biological systems, and the beauty and power of combining theory and experiments!