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Contact

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 10:32:08 -0800

Contact Me

Please fill out and submit this form if you’d like to reach out to me, and I’ll do my best to get back to you promptly.

I look forward to connecting. Cheers!

Teaching

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 21:40:17 -0800

Neuromatch Academy Computational Neuroscience

I was a project TA for the 2022 and 2023 iterations of the Neuromatch Academy Computational Neuroscience course.
The application for TA-ship required me to make a 5-minute video explaining one of the concepts and do a walkthrough of one of the tutorials.
Here is my video application (2022)

Neuromatch Academy Deep Learning

I had also simultaneously applied for the NMA Deep Learning TA-ship, though I opted to TA the Computational Neuroscience course.
Here is my video application (2022)

Service

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 17:47:41 -0800

eLife Community Ambassadors Program

I was one of 243 volunteers from around the world to participate in the 2019 eLife Community Ambassadors program. As an Ambassador, I worked on promoting open science via two key initiatives outlined below.

Readability Initiative

Theo Sanderson and I co-led this initiative with the aim of producing ‘Lucid Bio’ adaptations of some papers published in eLife.
‘Lucid’ adaptations would be written in simpler language than is used in publications today, and also have interactive plots to allow readers to examine data deeply.
We used the template from Distil publications as a starting point, and produced a ‘Lucid’ adaptation of this paper.

Outreach

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 17:10:53 -0800

UCSD Postdoc PITCH Competition (2025)

This was the inaugural “Three Minute Thesis”-style competition for postdocs at UC San Diego. I talked about my research on endogenous viruses in cephalopods. I placed first in this competition.

Torrey Pines Training Consortium (TPTC) Postdoc Pitch Competition (2025)

This was the mesa-wide follow up to the UC San Diego competition. The top two finalists from UC San Diego, Scripps Research, Salk Institute, and Sanford Prebys were selected as contestants. I came in second place at this competition, and also won the People’s Choice Award.

About

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 13:56:31 -0800

Who I Am – The Bureaucratic Version

I am a highly collaborative researcher with diverse scientific interests, driven by a desire to use my training to address problems of societal importance. I have 8+ years of experience in the biomedical sciences. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow in Loren Looger’s lab at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). I earned my Bachelor’s degree (B.Sc. Biotechnology) from Manipal University, graduating with distinction and earning the Dr TMA Pai Gold Medal. I was awarded my PhD from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR), Bangalore. Under the guidance of Dr. Vatsala Thirumalai, I studied the neural circuits controlling motor function in larval zebrafish (Danio rerio). My thesis dissertation focused on the implications of bistability in cerebellar Purkinje neurons for circuit function. I am a strong advocate for systemic change in academia, having contributed as an eLife Community Ambassador and subsequently as a member and co-chair of eLife’s Early Career Advisory Group (ECAG). I am also an avid science communicator and educator.

Current Research

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 13:40:31 -0800

Current Research Interests

Genetic tools for emerging model organisms

Rodents have caused more than just the bubonic plague - they continue to plague scientific research by being the focus of the vast majority of life sciences research.

Humans are not rodents, however, and neither are many other organisms which are just as interesting to study. And while research into rodents has been fruitful and informative, we are in the era of biological research where any animal could become a model organism. However, the gap between genetic tools available for use in standard model systems (rodents, flies) and emerging model systems (basically, every other organism) is still wide, and one of my missions is to develop tools to make more organisms genetically tractable.

Past Research

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 13:40:31 -0800

Past Research

Bistability in cerebellar Purkinje neurons

For my PhD, I studied the physiology of Purkinje neurons in the cerebellum of larval zebrafish (Danio rerio). Purkinje neurons (PNs) are the central processing units of the cerebellum. They are spontaneously active and exhibit bistability, switching between two stable firing modes — tonic and bursting. If each of the ~200 PNs in a larval zebrafish can be in one of two states, there is an astronomically large number of possible state combinations the population could exist in. The broad goal of my graduate thesis was to understand what the bistable firing mode of a cell meant for circuit function, and how a circuit could function in the face of such combinatorics.

Publications

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 13:40:26 -0800

Primary Research

Creating clear and informative image-based figures for scientific publications.
Jambor H, Antonietti A, Alicea B, Audisio T, Auer S, Bhardwaj V, Burgess S, Ferling I, Gazda M, Hoeppner L, Ilangovan V, Lo H, Olson M, Mohamed S, Sarabipour S, Varma A, Walavalkar K, Wissink E, Weissgerber T
PLoS Biology (2021) || PDF

This was the ouput of a diverse, global team of researchers who were part of the eLife Community Ambassadors Program, specifically the Meta-Research working group.