People

KARTHIK RAMAN

Current Members

Aarti Ravindran

Aarti Ravindran (Post-doctoral fellow)

I obtained my M.Sc. (Hons.) Biological Sciences and M.E. Biotechnology from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan. My doctoral programme was completed at Anna University after which I continued there as a Guest Faculty for two years. I am currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher on environmental microbiomes.

Debomita Chakraborty

Debomita Chakraborty (PhD student, jointly with Prof. Raghunathan Rengaswamy)

I am working in the field of computational methods for reliable biological circuit design. My study includes investigation of topological features that make circuit components such as genetic oscillators, repressilators, etc., robust to retroactivity when incorporated in a biological circuit.
Indumathi P

Indumathi P (PhD student & Prime Minister's Research Fellow, jointly with Dr. Himanshu Sinha)

I have completed my B.Tech from KCT, Coimbatore. I pursued my masters from IIT Guwahati, wherein I worked in the production of ovine angiotensinogen in Pichia pastoris. I am currently working in collaboration with Dr. Karthik Raman and Dr. Himanshu Sinha. My work focuses on modeling the gut microbiota of infants and investigating interaction between the microbes in the gut. 

Lavanya Raajaraam

Lavanya Raajaraam (PhD student)

I completed my B.Tech in Industrial Biotechnology from SASTRA University in 2017. I am doing my MS + PhD in Computational Systems Biology. I am currently working on simultaneous overproduction of multiple metabolites.

Maziya Ibrahim

Maziya Ibrahim (Institute Post-doctoral Fellow)

I completed my Ph.D. in Computational Biology at Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University, Chennai. My work here focuses on constraint-based modelling approaches for the production of industrially relevant metabolites such as Lactic Acid by microbial communities.
Pratyay Sengupta

Pratyay Sengupta (PhD student & Prime Minister's Research Fellow)

I am Pratyay from the 'city of joy' Kolkata. I completed my B.Tech in Biotechnology from NIT Durgapur in 2020. I was also selected for INSA Summer Fellow 2019. Currently, I am pursuing my PhD in Computational Systems Biology. My research interests lie primarily in integrated multi-omics analysis to find potential therapeutic targets in disease types. Apart from research, I have a keen interest in drawing, photography and travelling.

Prem Jagadeesh

Prem Jagadeesh (PhD student, jointly with Prof. Arun Tangirala)

I work on 'Parameter Estimation and Greybox Modelling of Biological Processes'. I am also interested in Mathematical System's theory, Dynamical Systems and Control Theory.

Samyugdha V

Samyugdha V (MS student)

Shradha Sharma

Shradha Sharma (PhD Student)

I hold a B.Tech degree in Biotechnology and an M.Tech degree in Biomedical Engineering. My current research revolves around investigating the microbiome of coral reefs in the Red Sea. Specifically, I aim to compare the microbial populations of healthy and diseased coral in order to understand the differences and propose potential probiotics for the recovery of diseased corals. In addition to my research, I enjoy indulging in anime, reading books, and gym.

Vijaya Yuvaram Singh

Vijaya Yuvaram Singh (Post-baccalaureate fellow)

A data scientist who is interested in biology. I have a Bachelor's in Mechatronics and worked on AI, ML, and DL projects. My current focus is to apply statistics to biological data to understand the patterns hidden in it.

Alumni (post-docs)

Aswathy Raghu

Aswathy Raghu (IBSE Post-doctoral Fellow)

My PhD is in computational chemical reaction engineering from the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Madras. Currently, I am working on constraint based modelling of gut microbiome and its perturbation analysis.
Devika N T

Devika N T (Institute Post-doctoral Fellow)

I work on Genome Scale Metabolic Models of Gut Microbes that can provide insights into the role of metabolic modelling towards human health and disease.

Alumni (graduate students)

Priyan Bhattacharya

Priyan Bhattacharya (PhD student, jointly with Prof. Arun Tangirala)

Priyan defended his thesis titled "Systems-Theoretic Approaches to Discover Adaption-capable Biological Networks" in 2023. His thesis encompassed developing several methods based on systems theory to understand and discover biological networks capable of adaptation. Priyan went on to pursue a post-doc with Prof. Rajanikanth Vadigepalli at Thomas Jefferson University.

Dinesh Kumar K B

Dinesh Kumar K B (MS student)

Dinesh's defended his MS thesis, titled "A protocol for studying metabolic interactions in microbial communities using graph-based approaches" in 2023. His thesis involved developing methods to predict various features of microbiomes by analysing the interactions among the microbes within them. He utilises a combination of network-based and constraint-based approaches to model microbial communities. Dinesh went on to pursue a PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after a brief stint as a researcher in our lab (on a project funded by Hindustan Unilever Limited), following his MS.

Malvika Sudhakar

Malvika Sudhakar (PhD student, jointly with Prof. Raghunathan Rengaswamy)

Malvika completed her B.Tech Bioinformatics from DY Patil University, Mumbai followed by a M.Tech Biotechnology from BITS Pilani, Goa. Her thesis was titled "Machine learning on multi-omic data for identifying driver genes in cancer". Malvika went on to pursue a post-doc at the Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Denmark Technological University (DTU).

Shayantan Banerjee

Shayantan Banerjee (MS student, jointly with Dr. B Ravindran)

Shayantan defended his MS thesis titled "Sequence neighborhoods enable reliable prediction of pathogenic mutations in cancer genomes" in 2021. Shayantan went on to pursue a PhD from KCDH, IIT Bombay.

Gayathri S

Gayathri S (PhD Student)

Gayathri did her B.Tech (Hons.) in Biotechnology from SASTRA University, then worked as systems engineer in TCS for 3 years. She then pursued her studies with an M.Tech in Biopharmaceutical Technology from Anna University. Her research work mainly focuses on understanding the influence of regulation on metabolism. Her PhD (awarded in 2021) was titled "Understanding the design principles of metabolic networks".  Gayathri was the first PhD scholar at IIT Madras to be awarded the IIT Madras Institute Blues Award.  She was also the recipient of the Institute Research Award (2019).

Aparajitha Srinivasan

Aparajitha Srinivasan (PhD student, jointly with Dr. Smita Srivastava)

Aparajitha's PhD (awarded in 2020) was in the area of plant metabolic engineering. Her thesis, entitled "Strategies for enhanced production of alpha-tocopherol in cell culture of Helianthus annuus l." encompasses metabolic modeling, genetic engineering, plant tissue culture and various optimization strategies for enhancement of α-tocopherol (Vitamin E) in Helianthus annuus (Sunflower).

Aarthi Ravikrishnan

Aarthi Ravikrishnan (PhD student, jointly with Dr. Smita Srivastava)

Aarthi completed her B. Tech (hons.) in Industrial Biotechnology from SASTRA University in 2011 and M. Tech in Biotechnology from Anna University in 2013. Aarthi's PhD thesis (awarded in 2019) was titled "Understanding microbial interactions in communities through an integrated computational and experimental framework". Aarthi's thesis was awarded the "Best PhD Thesis in Data Sciences".

Beethika Tripathi

Beethika Tripathi (MS student, jointly with Dr. B Ravindran)

Beethika's thesis was titled "Applications of Community Detection and Link Prediction on Multi-relational Networks", and her MS degree was awarded in 2019. She went on to Microsoft India (Hyderabad).

Karthik Azhagesan

Karthik Azhagesan (MS Student, jointly with Dr. B Ravindran)

Karthik Azhagesan's MS thesis (awarded in 2018) was titled " Machine Learning Approaches to Predict Essential Genes Across Organisms".

Abinaya Badri

Abinaya Badri (MS student, jointly with Prof. Guhan Jayaraman)

Abinaya's MS thesis (awarded in 2017) was titled "Investigation of Metabolic Capabilities of Recombinant Lactococcus lactis for Hyaluronan Production Using a Genome-scale Metabolic Model".

Aditya Pratapa

Aditya Pratapa (MS student, jointly with Dr. Shankar Balachandran)

Aditya worked on applying high-performance computing techniques to the analysis of complex metabolic networks. Aditya's MS thesis (awarded in 2015) was titled "Design of Efficient Algorithms to Identify Synthetic Lethals in Metabolic Networks".

Alumni (major projects)

Alumni (short-term projects)

  • Vakula Venkatesh, Vaishnave K V (School students, under the Research Science Initiative (Chennai) Programme 2019)
  • Madhuvanthi Muliya (SASTRA, summer project, 2019)
  • Vasudha Balaji (SASTRA, summer project, 2019)
  • Arinjoy Dutta (Anna University, summer project, 2019)
  • Aditya G (BITS, IITM Summer Fellowship, 2019)
  • Sachita Nishal (BITS Pilani, Goa, summer project, 2018)
  • Himanshu Aggarwal (IISER Mohali, IITM Summer Fellowship, 2018)
  • S. V. Shanmugha Balan, Arjun Swaminathan, Yoseph Daniel, G. Namasivayam (School students, under the Research Science Initiative (Chennai) Programme 2018)
  • Balaji Ganesh (NITT, summer project, 2017)
  • Deshmaa R T (PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, IITM Summer Fellowship, 2017)
  • Harshavardhini Balakrishnan & Pranav Subramaniam (School students, under the Research Science Initiative (Chennai) Programme 2017)
  • Anna Cherian (IISER Bhopal, Short summer project, 2016)
  • Rakshitha Arun & Keerthanya R (School students, under the Research Science Initiative (Chennai) Programme 2016)
  • Anjul Tyagi (IIIT Vadodara, NNMCB Summer Fellow, 2016)
  • Rakshitha Arun & Keerthanya R (School students, under the Research Science Initiative (Chennai) Programme 2016)
  • Vasudha Balaji & Apoorva (School students of Vidya Mandir, Summer 2016)
  • Garima Chuphal & Vishhvak Srinivasan (School students, under the Research Science Initiative (Chennai) Programme 2015)
  • Srikar Srinivas & Ritwik Senapati (School students of Vidya Mandir, Summer 2014)
  • Hari Prasanna (SVCE, IITM Summer Fellowship, 2013)
  • Abhishek V (NITK, summer project, 2013)
  • Nitish Rath (NITR, summer project, 2013)
  • Kumar Gaurav (IITM Summer Fellowship, 2012)
  • Aiswarya Jayaprakash (IITM Summer Fellowship, 2012)
Group Photo, 2017 August. Standing L-R: Shayantan, Saransh, Prem, Aparajitha, Karthik Raman, Devika, Aarthi, Saket, Pradeep. Squatting L-R: Priyan, Muthu, Omkar, Malvika, Gayathri, Samyugdha, Karthik Azhagesan.

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