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I hail from a scenic village, Konni in the South Indian State of Kerala. That's where I grew up, except for a few years of my early childhood which was at Bangalore. My schooling was at Mount Bethany School, Mylapra. My Junior College studies were at St. Berchman's College, Changanacherry.

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I studied for my Bachelor's degree in Zoology at Catholicate College, Pathanamthitta. After obtaining a Masters’ degree from the Department of Zoology, at Kariyavattom Campus of the University of Kerala, I moved to the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR), Bangalore. At NCBS I worked with Apurva Sarin for my Doctoral degree on “programmed cell death (apoptosis) in the immune system”. The time I had spent in AS Lab and at NCBS were the formative years of my scientific career.

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During my graduate studies at NCBS I got interested in the widely used genetic model organism Drosophila melanogaster (fruitfly), which I owe to a visit to the laboratory of Veronica Rodrigues and my discussions with K. S. Krishnan at TIFR Mumbai. On completion of my PhD I moved to the lab of Stephen Cohen at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, as a Humboldt Fellow, where I worked on “microRNA functions during Drosophila development”. With Cohen lab I moved to the Temasek Lifesciences Laboratory (TLL), Singapore as a Research Fellow and then to the Institute for Molecular Cell Biology (IMCB), A-STAR, Singapore. In the meantime, I had started my independent research program on energy homeostasis using Drosophila as a model organism. 

 

I joined IISER Thiruvananthapuram as an Assistant Professor in March 2013. During 2013-2018 I was a Ramanujan Fellow of SERB-DST, India.

 

Academic journey

 

Education:

1990: Secondary school, Mount Bethany School, Mylapra, Pathanamthitta, Kerala, India

1992: Pre-degree Course, St. Berchmann’s College, Changanacherry, Kerala, India

1995: B. Sc. Zoology, Catholicate College, Pathanamthitta, Kerala, India

1997: M. Sc. Zoology, University of Kerala, Kariyavattom Campus, Kerala, India 

2004: PhD in Molecular Biology, National Center for Biological Sciences, NCBS-TIFR, Bangalore, India

 

Research experience:

2004-2005: Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany

2006-2007: International Postdoctoral Fellowship DFG, EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany

2007-2010: Research Fellow, Temasek Lifesciences Laboratory, National University of Singapore

2010-2012: Research Fellow, Institute of Molecular Cell Biology , A-STAR Singapore

2013-2022: Assistant Professor, IISER, Thiruvananthapuram 

2022-present: Associate Professor, IISER, Thiruvananthapuram