Joined BITS Pilani as a faculty member in April 2005. Till Dec. 2018, was deputed to off-campus (Chennai), and since Jan 2019 based at the Pilani campus of BITS Pilani. On the research front, my research group works on in vitro disease models that include liver diseases and obesity, Metabolic Syndrome (MetS), cancer, and wound healing, for understanding disease biology and evaluating drugs /nutraceuticals/other emerging diagnostic and treatment approaches. We are also looking at research themes in nutritional biochemistry, potential therapeutics for certain metabolic and microbial diseases, novel diagnostic techniques/assays, pharmaceutical biotechnology and green-chemistry.
My doctoral research (2000 to 2004) in Medical Biochemistry was at the University of Madras (Taramani campus), and involved disease models pertaining to the cardiovascular system. I defended my doctoral dissertation in March 2005.
During the off-campus innings between April 2005 and December 2018 at Chennai, I was handling Practice School and Work-Integrated Learning Programmes (WILP) at various research organizations and industries. This also included teaching opportunities at two leading hospitals — Sankara Nethralaya and Frontier Lifeline — where BITS Pilani had strong collaborative academic programmes. My research activities during this time were primarily related to the lipid biology of retinoblastoma (a pediatric ocular tumour), in collaboration with the Ocular Pathology laboratory and the Bioinformatics Laboratory of Vision Research Foundation, Sankara Nethralaya. My other key research efforts during this period were in the context of industrial biochemical processes, and was undertaken in collaboration with the Chemical Engineering department, CSIR-Central Leather Research Institute (CSIR-CLRI).
Between 2005 and 2019, mentored BITS Practice School students (PS-I and PS-II) — across disciplines — at a wide range of organizations. PS-II responsibilities also often involved health/pharmaceuticals sector organizations at other locations (Bangalore and Hyderabad), apart from those in the Chennai region.
During the 2005 to 2018 period, coordinated several WILP programmes of BITS Pilani in multiple industries/domains – healthcare (Frontier Lifeline Hospital, Medical Research Foundation – Sankara Nethralaya), industrial/process engineering (Technip), information-technology (Wipro) and telecommunications (Aricent).