How does natural selection shape the way cells perceive their environment through sensing and signaling? I use theory, molecular genetics, and quantitative microscopy to dissect the biochemical circuits that set metabolic state and growth in unstable environments.
Currently, I am a PhD candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard University, advised by Andrew Murray. My PhD research project asked how a bistable switch in mitochondrial activity lets a clonal yeast population hedge its bets across fluctuating environments. Since 2023, I have headed the LS50 laboratory course, where first-year undergraduates learn to carry out independent, integrated life science research focused on the molecular mechanisms governing GPCR activation in yeast.
I am an incoming ELISIR Scholar at the EPFL School of Life Sciences, where I will start the Laboratory of Metabolism and Signal Transduction. The lab will study how signal transduction networks function and evolve in fluctuating environments, and how cells buffer unpredictable changes in metabolic flux. We will combine single-cell metabolic measurements with yeast molecular genetics and experimental evolution.
I hold a B.Tech and M.Tech in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. As an undergraduate there, I worked with Johan Paulsson at Harvard Medical School on gene expression noise in fast-growing bacteria, with Nozomu Yachie at the University of Tokyo on high-throughput protein interaction mapping, and with Michaela TerAvest at Michigan State University on engineering bacterial central metabolism.