I hail from Lucknow, a city famed as the cultural center of northern India. After completing my bachelor’s degree in chemistry and botany from Lucknow University, I migrated to south India with a fellowship from the Department of Biotechnology (Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India) to pursue my masters in Biotechnology at Madurai Kamaraj University, India. I qualified the national level GATE exam and started my doctoral program under the mentorship of Dr. P. Sundaresan at the Department of Genetics, Aravind Medical Research Foundation. The focus of my doctoral study was identification and characterization of genes associated with congenital globe anomalies.

With a specific interest to work in the field of genetics and epigenetics of ocular diseases, I applied to Dr. Kleinman’s lab for a postdoctoral position and joined the group in July 2015. During my tenure as a postdoc at UK, I will be exploring the epigenetic regulation and transcriptional repression mediated through histone deacetylase complexes in aging retina and AMD. Data from our lab showed altered expression of HDAC1 and 2 in advanced dry AMD. HDACs (HDAC1 and 2) function in different multiprotein corepressor complexes (mainly Sin3, NuRD and CoREST) that are associated with sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins, which are thought to target the complexes to specific genes, leading to local chromatin modification. The main focus of my research will be to identify the role of these corepressor complexes and subsequent transcriptomic effects in aging retina and AMD.

Outside my research, I like to spend time with my wife and daughter. I also like to travel and look forward to explore and experience all the good things that the Bluegrass State has to offer.