Background

I’m an engineer by training and completed my Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech.), majoring in Biotechnology, from the National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India (graduating top of my class in the department). My first experience in academic research was in the summer of 2011, in the lab of Dr. Upendra Nongthomba at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. I was funded during this internship through an Indian Academy of Science Summer Research Fellowship.

After my B.Tech, I directly joined the graduate school at the National Centre for Biological Sciences – Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. Under the guidance of Dr. Axel Brockmann in the Honey Bee Lab, I worked on a diverse range of projects related to the honey bee waggle dance behaviour. I successfully defended my thesis in October 2019 and have been associated with NCBS as a Bridging Postdoctoral Fellow since then.

My first research stint outside India was in Germany was in 2015 in the lab of Dr. Ricarda Scheiner at the University of Würzburg, funded by the DAAD “A New Passage to India” Fellowship. In 2020, I was hosted by Dr. Morgane Nouvian and Dr. Anja Weidenmüller as an Invited Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg in the University of Konstanz.