Interests

During my high school years as an ardent Biology student, I was incredibly fascinated by Santiago Ramon y Cajal’s intricately detailed sketch of a single human Purkinje neuron. As my knowledge of Biology grew, I eventually began pondering over the cellular mechanisms that give rise to such an elegant design. Ever since, developmental neurobiology has been my primary interest with the main question being: how is the phenomenal cellular diversity of a complex organ such as the brain generated?

Using the Drosophila visual system as the model of study, I want to understand how cell fate decisions are coupled with cell cycle events at the level of neural stem cells called neuroblasts (NBs). In the developing fly optic lobe, two time axes exists in neuroblasts: temporal patterning and the rate of cell cycle. The former refers to the continuously changing ‘competence’ of NBs to produce specific neurons, and the latter is the discrete set of time intervals between successive cell division events. My study focusses on understanding the relationship between these two distinct timing mechanisms that drive cell fate decisions in the fly brain.

Scientific pursuits aside, I listen to Jazz in the streets of New York, play ping pong in the department and keep pushing my limits of surviving the spiciest of Asian cuisines!