After completion of M.Sc. in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Dr. Jha joined Prof. G. Krishnamoorthy's group at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for Ph.D. Her thesis work was aimed at understanding the mechanism of aggregation of proteins into amyloid fibrils, a phenomenon which is responsible for diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson. During her Ph.D., she developed and used a novel time-resolved fluorescence anisotropy-based method to map the structure of amyloid fibrils. This knowledge is important for the design of drugs for amyloid diseases. Her interest in structural biology and ultrafast fluorescence spectroscopy led to the collaborations with Prof. Jayant B. Udgaonkar at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore and Prof. Tahei Tahara at RIKEN, Japan. Following her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Jennifer R. Cochran at Department of Bioengineering Stanford University, USA where she explored different methods to engineer proteins/peptides which could inhibit the growth of cancer cells. She also developed novel fusion proteins which could be used as molecular imaging agents for tumor progression and showed the feasibility of the method in mouse models. After her post-doc she joined Agharkar Research Institute, Pune as a DST-Inspire faculty/ scientist in nanobioscience group. Her interdisciplinary research interest led to productive collaborations with IISER and NCL, Pune. Together, she developed novel therapeutic agents like beta-breaker cyclic peptides, chitosan-PLGA based nanoparticles and ionic liquids as inhibitors for amyloid-beta protein aggregation to target Alzheimer’s disease. Her work has been published in various internationally reputed peer reviewed journals namely ACS Biochemistry, ACS Langmuir, ACS Biomacromolecules, Journal of Molecular biology, RSC Journal of Materials Chemistry, Biophysical Chemistry etc.

Dr. Pooja Rana has completed her M. Sc. in Biochemistry in 2002 and Ph.D. in the year 2006 from Punjab Agricultural University in the year 2006. She qualified CSIR-NET (Lectureship) in the year 2004, ICMR-JRF in the year 2004 and ICAR ARS-NET in the year 2005. She worked as Assistant Professor at Modern College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Ganeshkhind, Pune for 15 Years. She worked as Chairman for the subject of Biotechnology at undergraduate and postgraduate level at Savitribai Phule Pune University. Additionally, she has worked as an External examiner and appointed as Paper-Setters and Moderators for postgraduate and undergraduate course of Biotechnology by Savitribai Phule Pune University. She was also invited as an external examiner for paper setting and practical exam by Bharti Vidya Peeth. While working in college, she was actively involved in NAAC work and Examination department of the College. She has attended many Conferences, workshops and faculty development programmes and completed four online courses under Swayam. She had published two text books under Nirali Publication. Her research interests include isolation, purification and characterization of compounds from natural products and exploring their bioactivity potential in alleviation of various diseases and drug discovery.

Dr. Vijayasarathi obtained his undergraduate and master's degrees, followed by a M. Phil degree in Chemistry from Pondicherry University in Puducherry. Dr. Vijayasarathi holds his Ph.D. in Chemistry (Chemoinformatics) from Pondicherry University, Puducherry. The main objective of the Ph.D. work was to develop a knowledge based java application to define, encode and detect the fundamental chemical entities of organic reactivity interest using chemical ontology. He has qualified state level eligibility test for the lectureship in Chemistry TN-SET. He has six years of research experience to his credit that includes the positions like project assistant, and post-doctoral research experience like Research Associate I & II. He has attended various national and international conferences, workshops, SDP, STTP, etc. and has 06 publications to his credit.

Dr. Manisha had completed graduation in Pharmacy from University of Pune, M. Tech. in Bioprocess Technology from ICT, Mumbai, followed by a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune. She has qualified GATE – a national level competitive exam. Also has five years industrial and research experience to her credit and during that period she holds the positions like Research Associate and Senior Research associate. She has attended national and international conferences as delegates and invited speaker. Besides, she has 13 research publications and 03 book chapters to her credit. She was selected for prestigious DST-INSPIRE and CSIR-SRF Fellowship during her Ph.D. tenure.

Dr. Prasad completed M. Sc. in Biotechnology in 2010 followed by qualifying CSIR-NET (Lectureship) in the same year. He isolated 11 new, and chemo-taxonomically characterized 4 unclassified endophytic bacterial isolates (with initiation of large scale process optimization of a antibacterial peptide from endophyte Bacillus spp. From Anthocephalus spp. - Kadamba tree) from medicinal plants for a project at Vidya Pratishthan’s School of Biotechnology, Baramati. As a Lecturer at Nowrosjee Wadia college, he taught, examined and supervised undergraduate Biotechnology students. His special achievements at the college included supervising blind students and contributing in an extra credit course as a visiting faculty. He joined Prof. Ameeta Ravikamar’s laboratory at Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Savitribai Phule Pune University in 2013 and received PhD in Biochemistry in 2021. During his PhD, he elucidated the human pancreatic amylase inhibition mechanism of a phytochemical using enzyme kinetics, binding thermodynamics, and molecular docking. He has published a process patent on the purification process. He continued as a Project Consultant after his PhD followed by assisting on an ICMR project in the Hepatitis Group at the National Institute of Virology alongwith assistance in Computational Data Analysis of Sars-Cov-2 sequences. His research at NIV led to identification of a few potential antiviral drug candidates through RNA-seq data analysis and computational drug repurposing approaches.

Ms. Yogita Ranade has completed her M.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Pune, Maharashtra. She has qualified national-level competitive exams, ASRB-ARS-NET in Agricultural Microbiology conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). She has more than six years of research experience and five years of teaching experience to her credit. She has attended various national and international conferences as delegate and has 18 publications to her credit.

Profile

Dr. Shama Mujawar has research interests in Genomics,Proteomics, Structural Biology and Network Biology. Her experience in analyzing the bacterial genomes has led to the identification of indispensable protein targets, vaccine candidates and drug compounds effective against multidrug resistant bacterial species. Meanwhile, while handling these genomes she has developed her interest in Nutrigenomics to bridge the gap between the lifestyle and other chronic diseases based on diet, involvement of genes and its expression.

Dr. Pauroosh Kaushal has research interest in the design of biomedical systems, physiological control systems and biomedical signal analysis. He has done his doctoral research from College of Engineering Pune, wherein he prototyped an artificial tongue system and enhanced the performance of system using feature engineering and perception modeling. He has published 10 research papers in international journals, 1 book chapter and presented 8 papers in national and international conferences.

Dr. K. V. Swamy has obtained his Ph. D in Biochemistry from Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. He was joined Dr. D. Y. Patil Biotechnology and Bioinformatics Institute, Dr. D. Y. Patil Vidyapeeth, Pune in 2007 as a faculty. He also worked as Lab-Administrative officer at Thyrocare Technologies Limited, Navi Mumbai. He was honoured with Young Scientist Award by ICMPHP, George Washington, USA in 2012, Research Award by Dr. D. Y. Patil Vidyapeeth, Pune in 2019 and Kasturba Samshodan Yuvratna Puraskar in 2019. He received DST-SERB project under Young Scientist Scheme in 2016. He has 12 years of experience in the Biochemistry, bioinformatics, computational biology, molecular modelling, docking and dynamics and Systems biology. He has authored 28 International research publications. He also serves as reviewer of international journals in the field of Molecular modelling. Bioinformatics, computational Biology.