Team:IISER-Pune-India/Team

Mutatis Mutandis

<!DOCTYPE html> Team Members

Team

People who formed the family that is Team-IISER-Pune

Team Members

Pranav SR is a 3rd-year BS-MS student and the Team Leader for the IISER Pune iGEM Team. Part of the Wet Lab team, he claims to be a biology enthusiast with interests in microbiology and genetics. In his free time, he will binge through a lot of anime and animated movies. He is a certified graphic designer with experience in most web designing softwares. Pranav has been the coordinator for the designing team of ‘Pahal’, the annual magazine of Disha, a club that promotes education among underprivileged children. Jumping up the ladder, he is now the general coordinator of Pahal as well. His favourite sport is football but you are most likely to find him in the gym than on the field (He is known to time his experiments in such a way that he never misses an hour a day in the gym). His craze for Italian food is unrivalled by anyone else in the team. He is currently characterizing the Blue-light Repressible system for our construct.

Pranav S R

Team Leader & Wet Lab Team

A member of the wet lab team, Sayantan Datta, has taken a great interest in performing directed evolution on bacteria, particularly because of his interest in Evo-Devo. Calls himself a proud geek because of his love for anime as well as Dungeons and Dragons (DMing included), Sayantan can also be seen playing basketball occasionally. Of course, when it comes to interests in watching sports, both football and basketball are included. Fairly proficient with a camera, he offers free photography services to people around him, including the iGEM Team (with the team photos being clicked by him). He’s also been part of the Media Team for the annual fest of IISER Pune- Karavaan. With no limitations to the style, Sayantan can devour large varieties of food or anything that is edible (his words, not mine). He is characterizing the negative feedback loop for our construct.

Sayantan Datta

Wet Lab Team

Introducing you to the crazy party animal of the Wet Lab team- Varsha Jaisimha!!!! Don’t let her short height fool you - she can be very explosive and would love to literally blow up anything. Her craziness has contributed to her being named as an ‘Imp’. She takes huge interest in Immunology, Epigenetics and Synthetic Biology. However, her antics almost always overshadow her academic interests. She is first and foremost, a dancer in contemporary styles, and has been the coordinator for the Dance Club - her flexibility is unmatched by any other person in the team and she has done gymnastics before. She was also the Chief Editor of Pahal in 2019 and likes to read adventure/thriller/mystery novels (Major Agatha Christie Fan). Varsha doesn’t have the patience to watch an entire TV Show but will dabble in feel-good and comedy movies. Besides being a Wish Granter for Make-A-Wish India, her greatest passions are to travel and PARTY! Varsha prides in being the first to pull off a successful Goa Trip with college mates and having near-death experiences all as a part of her ‘adventures’. She loves to try all cuisines, only limited by the fact that she is a vegetarian. Varsha is characterizing the mutator plasmid, a very crucial part of our project.

Varsha Jaisimha

Wet Lab Team

With being mature (and not a self-righteous prick) and being fun as two ends of the spectrum, Abhinav likes to believe that he lies somewhere in the middle. Being classified as a nerd in school, he has come a long way and is one of the most socially active people on campus. He has been active in a lot of activities over the years, which include being a Coordinator for the Literary Club and the Content Writing Department for Karavaan 2018. This is particularly why he is the one who has written all the descriptions. His interest in biology is reflected in him co-heading the Biology Question Making Team for Mimamsa, the Science Challenge organised by IISER Pune for Undergraduates. Besides a lot of fiction and the occasional non-fiction books, he likes to immerse himself into geography and history. He also enjoys playing board games and solving jigsaw puzzles. Abhinav desperately missing baking & cooking in the comforts of his home - where he has full independence in the ingredients he uses. Sauces are his favourite, implying that french and Chinese cooking is what he aims for. Of course, with all the cooking, eating is also an integral part of the practice and there is no hindrance to what kind of cuisine he enjoys. His interests are majorly in chemical biology which he applies in designing the Lead Biosensing and Bioremediating System for the Wet Lab Team.

Abhinav Masih

Wet Lab Team

Here is Utkarsh Mahajan, known to his friends as Utkya, the most sporty member of the entire team. He is as Marathi as a person can get. If he's not in lab, you'll probably find him sleeping in his room. Utkarsh is the only person in the iGEM team who has represented not one, but two institutes in the Inter-IISER Sports Meet (IISM) (from both IISER Pune and IISER Kolkata). He excels at Kho-Kho, which is also his favourite sport. However, he’s saddened by the fact that Kho-Kho is not very popular and has to be content with watching sports like cricket, badminton and hockey on the Telly. He likes reading novels and is currently the coordinator for the Spread The Smile Programme - a teaching and interaction programme conducted by Disha for underprivileged, rural school children. Utkarsh really likes spicy, Maharashtrian food - an indication of his Marathi heritage. His interests lie in Molecular Biology and Microbiology which he is currently satisfying through his work with mutations rate in bacteria for the Wet Lab Team.

Utkarsh Anil Mahajan

Wet Lab Team

Known fondly as ‘Bunker’, Shubhankar Londhe is an integral part of the Computation Team. Straddling the edge of Mathematics and Biology, and with a considerable interest in Bioinformatics, Shubhankar’s mathematical models have given us a good insight into the team’s experiments. A guy who enjoys physical exercise, Shubankar plays tennis and spends a lot of time trekking along picturesque paths. To chill, he reads comics and fiction- his favourite being “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”. He has also been a part of Disha, teaching children Math, Science and Language. Shubhankar’s working on modelling the Lead Biosensor and Bioremediating system and how it could be changed to show better efficiency.

Shubhankar Londhe

Computation Team

Nishant Baruah, a member of the computation team, comes from a Physical Sciences background. With an eventual goal of pursuing Soft Condensed Matter Physics, he shows a great interest in Statistical Mechanics as well as Biophysics. In his free time, he plays video games, watches TV shows and movies, and reads books especially from the Fantasy Genre (I believe in Oxford commas) (As he has not bothered to specify which kind of games and shows he watches, you can quiz him here - nishant.baruah@students.iiserpune.ac.in). He also accompanies Sayantan (refer above) in his DnD sessions. He follows the Big 5 sports avidly (Football, Basketball, American Football, Cricket and Tennis) and feels sad that he can’t play them because of his recurring foot injuries (Excuses!). Even with all of this on his plate, Nishant actively participates in activities conducted by Disha, which include teaching children from underprivileged societies. As the laziest and the most clumsy person in the whole team, it is very hard to find Nishant outside his room, which sort of works out for him, as he can peacefully model the blue light system and the feedback loop from the comforts of his own bed.

Nishant Baruah

Computation Team

Self-christened as Maximillian du Mycheaux, Supratim Das is a member of the computation team. While his ultimate goal is to study Human Behaviour and Evolution, he has started off small by studying development and modelling the evolution and growth in the system. He’s a Busy Bee on social media on which he spends most of his free time if he’s not sleeping or listening to Hip-Hop or K-pop on YouTube. He also likes studying political philosophy and will often try his hand out in cooking various kinds of cuisine. His part of the project deals with modelling the growth of bacteria containing the mutator plasmid as well as homology studies for proteins of our interest.

Supratim Das

Computation Team

Description

Vasudha Kishore Aher

Computation Team

PI & Mentors

Dr. Chaitanya Athale is an Asst. Prof. at IISER, Pune. His lab, called Self-organization and cell morphogenesis lab works in understanding self-organized principles of cell shape with biophysical models and cell biology.

Dr. Chaitanya Athale

Primary P.I

Description

Dr. Aurnab Ghose

Secondary P.I

Yamini is a Graduate student in the Department of Biology, working under Dr Amrita Hazra. She is intrigued by the extensive network of metabolic pathways and how subtle biochemical reactions bring about diversity in life forms. She is currently exploring the physiological and biochemical mechanisms of novel methylations involved in the anaerobic pathway to Vitamin B12 biosynthesis through a fine-tuned skill set of bioinformatics, enzymology and microbiology. She likes to read in her free time and experiment with various art forms. She is also an outdoorsy person and likes to take walks and garden.

Yamini Mathur

Mentor

Rupali is a Graduate student in the Department of Biology, working under Dr Amrita Hazra. Her interests are varied, ranging from microbiology, biochemistry and genetics to more system-level topics like immunology and metabolism. In her free time, she likes to read books, evident from her large collection, as well as do some of her own writing stuff. She also dabbles in arts and crafts and photography on the side.

Rupali Sathe

Mentor

Sushmita is a Graduate student in the Department of Biology, working under Dr Girish Ratnaparkhi. She is interested in understanding the regulation of early development in Drosophila, using a combination of genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry. She loves to read novels, paint in watercolour and play badminton in her free time. She also likes to watch badminton and cricket on the TV but her favourite remains to be mystery and crime drama. Sushmita also loves various Indian cuisine, especially dosas of all shapes and sizes.

Sushmitha Hegde

Mentor

Vinayak is a Graduate student in the Department of Biology, working under Dr Saikrishnan Kayrat. His current work deals with understanding the DNA Motor Proteins responsible for antibiotic resistance in bacteria. He likes to read non-fiction books and enjoys sports such as cricket and tennis. He also binge-watches TV shows with The Big Bang Theory and 13 Reasons Why currently on top of his list. He enjoys most kinds of Indian cuisine.

Vinayak Tumuluri

Mentor

Description

Poornima Raveendran

Mentor

Aarti is an undergraduate student in the Department of Biology, currently working under Dr Girish Ratnaparkhi. Having been in IISER for almost 5 years, she has held many important roles of responsibility - she was the General Coordinator for Disha, the social club and headed the Events Department for Karavaan 2016, the college fest. She was an active member of the Drama Club and likes to play a lot of fun games such as Taboo, Pictionary and Mafia in her free time. With a lot of work to do, she spends a lot of time sleeping, binging on YouTube, reading books and Arts and Crafts to rejuvenate her mind. Meditating and going to the gym are important events in her daily routine. She likes to organise and decorate her ‘place’ i.e. her room and her bench in the lab. She is academically interested in Fly Genetics, CRISPR, Developmental Biology and Immunology. This is not her first stint with iGEM either; she has served as the Team Leader for the IISER Pune iGEM 2017 Team and now serves as a mentor for the 2019 Team. Her favourite kinds of foods are Italian, Mexican and Indian.

Aarti Kejriwal

Advisor & 2017 team leader

Description

Jyothish Sudhakaran

Advisor & 2017 team member

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