Group Members

Ruqaiyah Khan

Ruqaiyah is a GATE-SRF. She is currently studying phage-derived lysins. She has completed a B.Sc. in Microbiology and an MSc. in Biosciences from Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi.

Soumyadeep Mandal

Soumyadeep is trying to understand the DNA repair mechanisms in viruses. He did his masters from Jawahar Lal Nehru University, Delhi.

Shivam Kashyap

Shivam is interested in understanding the genome segregation and packaging machinery of NCLDVs. He holds a B.Sc. in Medical Biotechnology and an M.Sc. in Biosciences. 

Pooja Yadav

Pooja is an M.Sc.-PhD dual degree student at IIT Bombay. She is currently working on coevolution between bacteriophage-host and gaining insights to combat bacterial phage resistance to increase the efficacy of phage therapy. She has completed her B.Sc Zoology Hons from Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi.

Ishika Gupta

Ishika is a M.Tech - Ph.D dual degree student. She is working on RNA phages and their evolutionary mechanisms. She has completed her B.Tech from Bengal Institute of Technology, Techno India, Kolkata. 

Tanya Bansal

Tanya is a DST- Inspire IITB- Monash Research Academy fellow. Her research aims to unravel the complexities of giant viruses and their interactions with host cells using advanced super- resolution microscopy techniques. She has completed her Master's degree in Biochemistry from Central University of Punjab.

Prama Pandey

Prama Pandey is a GATE-JRF. She is currently working on Pseudomonas aeruginosa-specific phages to formulate therapeutically advantageous cocktails by combining these phages. She holds a Master's degree in Biotechnology from the University of Hyderabad.  

Lavanya Chaudhary

Lavanya is an IITB-Monash Academy fellow trying to elucidate the structure of giant viral (Mimivirus) particles and their membrane acquisition using Cryo-EM and Cryo-ET. She has completed her M.Tech in Biotechnology from Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida.

Bhavesh Swarnkar

Bhavesh is a GATE-JRF. He is interested in understanding the speciation and evolution of bacteriophages. He earned his Master's degree in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and his Bachelor's degree in Zoology (Hons.) from Banaras Hindu University.

Dr. Anirvan Chatterjee

Dr. Anirvan Chatterjee, Co-founder and CEO of HaystackAnalytics Pvt. Ltd. has built on his expertise in microbial genomics gained through premier institutes such as IIT, Oxford University and Denmark Technical University with this startup. HaystackAnalytics has developed platform that enables labs to undertake genomic analysis of infectious diseases and tackling drug resistance.

Dr. Kirti Megha

Dr. Megha was awarded a Ph.D. in PGIMER, Chandigarh, in the year 2018. She was a Research Fellow in the Virology Discovery Unit at the CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, prior to moving to Mumbai as a postdoctoral fellow.  She has worked on the Isolation of giant viruses and SARS-CoV-2 from the Environment.

Dr. Shipra Sharma

Dr. Shipra Sharma obtained a Ph.D. degree in 2015 in Biotechnology from ICGEB, New Delhi, where she worked in the Virology Group with Prof Sunil K Lal. She briefly worked in NIRRH, Mumbai as DST Young Scientist l. At IIT Bombay, Shipra was a DST young Scientist and she worked on Influenza A virus host cross-talk.  

Dr. Supriya Patil 

Supriya completed her Ph.D. in 2019.  Her research at IIT-B focused on understanding the mechanism of DNA replication initiation in Mimivirus. 

Dr. Jigme Wangchuk

Jigme graduated in 2019. His work led to the identification of the interaction between small and large terminase proteins in bacteriophage N4. 

Dr. Avi Shukla

Avi completed her Ph.D. in 2019. Her work revolved around the characterization of the mimivirus capsid complex. She also identified the relationship between RDCP genes and genome size in amoebal giant viruses. 

Dr. Amrutraj Zade

Amrutraj is currently working as a genome analyst at HayStack Analytics Pvt. Ltd. Before graduating in 2019, his multi-disciplinary research work at IIT-B led to identification of the role of mimiviral Rab GTPase protein in the acquisition of inner membrane during virion assembly.

Dr. Tushar Ranjan

He is working as an Assistant Professor-cum-Scientist (PG) at the Department of Molecular Biology & Genetic Engineering, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur. His research work is oriented towards the molecular virology with a special emphasis on elucidating the mechanism of replication and genome encapsidation in plant viruses.

Dr. Ankita Gupta

Ankita graduated in 2017. She worked on the DNA repair proteins in Mimivirus.  Her project helped us to characterize a multifunctional primase with DNA/RNA polymerase.   

Dr. Venkata Chelikani

Dr. Chelikani was a post-doctoral fellow at the Molecular Virology lab. He worked towards understanding the genome packaging mechanisms in viruses. 

Dr. Deepak Singh

Dr. Deepak joined our lab as a postdoctoral fellow and was working towards understanding the mechanism of phage lysis. He obtained his PhD degree from Shiv Nadar University, Delhi.

Dr. Shailesh Lad

Shailesh graduated in 2022. He was a GATE-SRF and aims to decipher the DNA repair mechanisms operative in large DNA viruses.  He holds M.Sc. and B. Sc.  in Microbiology from The M.S. University of Baroda and Wilson College, University of Mumbai, respectively. 

Dr. Miryala Sravan Kumar

He is working as a research associate in the field of Network Medicine at the Center of Complex Network Research, Northeastern University, Boston, USA. In our lab, he was working in understanding the functional aspects of viral capsid proteins and ORFan genes in Giant viruses using genomics and systems biology approaches. 

Dr. Nisha Goyal

Nisha graduated in 2023. She studied the cytoskeleton modification of acanthamoeba during infection of Mimi and Marseille virus. Her research led the findings of tubulin cleavage and actin depolymerization during Mimivirus infection.

Dr. Deepti Sharma

Deepti graduated in 2024. She studied genome compaction in Mimivius and Marseillevirus. Her research helped in the identification and characterization of novel histone-like proteins in Marseillevirus and non-histone proteins in Mimivirus.  

Dr. Harshali Chaudhari

Harshali was a DST-INSPIRE fellow, graduated in 2024. She holds an M.Sc. degree in Bioinformatics from Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, and a B.Sc. in Biotechnology from Fergusson College, Pune. Her work helped us to understand how capsid size and genome variations in viruses are related. She also developed a model that allows us to predict the coinfection dynamics of a bacteriophage consortium.

Uma Maheswari

Uma was interested in understanding how large viruses stuff their capsid with genome.  She has a B.Tech. in Biotechnology from Shri Andal Alagar college of Engineering. 

Vibha Kumari 

Vibha was an IITB-Monash Academy fellow working on the identification of host factors required for the assembly and budding of the influenza virus. She holds an M.Sc. degree in Biotechnology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. 

Dr. Santhosh

Dr. Santhosh was a UGC-SRF, graduated in 2025. He completed an M.Sc. from Bangalore University, Bangalore. He worked on the DNA packaging mechanism of bacteriophage N4 and characterized several proteins that are coordinately involved in the genome packaging mechanism. 

Dr. Praveen Kant

Dr. Praveen was a  GATE-SRF fellow. He is an M.Tech. in Bioinformatics from the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. He worked on studying microbial diversity and its interactions in different environments. 

Dr. Tanvi Aggarwal

Dr. Tanvi was a GATE-SRF, graduated in 2024. She is a B.Tech in Biotechnology from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi. She worked on the genome packaging motor of two viral systems: FtsK-ATPase in M13 and Vaccinia virus. 

Dr. Monica Upadhyay

Dr. Monica was an IIT Bombay-Monash Academy fellow who graduated in 2025. She has completed her Master's in Biotechnology from Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, and a B.Sc. Zoology (H) from the University of Delhi, Delhi. Her work explains how giant viruses manage to package loads of proteins selectively. 

Dr. Aman Prakash

Dr Aman was a Post-Doctorate research fellow, focused on elucidating the DNA packaging mechanisms of Pseudomonas Jumbo Phages. His research specifically investigates the role and coordination of terminases within the packaging machinery. He earned his PhD from IIT Guwahati, where he developed a strong foundation in molecular biology by studying the CRISPR-Cas system in Leptospira.