Team members

Aditya Jeevannavar (Eggsy)
Sophomore Undergrad, Biological Sciences

The punniest guy in the group irritating at times but mostly amusing, his curly hair, dimple chins and rosy lips have driven people crazy. An enthusiastic quizzer, plays basketball and uses lame puns in his free time. He is known for his insightful ideas and his aversion to computational biology.

Gopinath Shanmugam (Gopi 65)
Senior Undergrad, Biological Engineering

Our Co-Team Leader, Gopi as we all affectionately call him, is not new to iGEM. He is as polite as he is kind. Gopi is a self-proclaimed insomniac and spends his nights doing sketches. He can be seen with a peacock feather on his head and a flute in his hand at random times of the day (Just like our writer got inspired here). Calm and composed, he always does stuff after a thorough investigation of all possible outcomes. “Fueled by BIRIYANI and PAROTTAS." Read more about him on his Wikipedia page

Kailash BP (Nalla thambi)
Junior Undergrad, Biological Engineering

Lord commander of the data watch. Was given the title Nalla Thambi(Tamil: good little brother) for sincerity and addressing seniors as Anna(Tamil: big brother). Hails from Chennai, goes home once a fortnight and returns with homemade food! Fluent in many languages including English, Tamil, Telugu, C, Perl, and Python. As a side project in a parallel universe he is working on turning himself into Pickle Rick.

Karthik D (KD)
Senior Undergrad, Biological Sciences

One of the friendliest persons that you’ll ever meet in the institute, his single mantra to lead a simple life: Put Peace. Sometimes he puts so much peace that he starts mugging (read studying) only from 6am for an 8am quiz. One simple way of offending him is to say something bad about Bangalore. Called the Team Leader with respect, he is an expert at coding and can learn literally anything in one single day. He doesn’t wish to depend on others and aims to stand on his own legs in his own farm.

DVSSS Kushal Kumar Reddy (Yellow Pages)
Sophormore Undergrad, Biological Sciences

Digavinti Venkat Shiva Satya Sai Kushal Kumar Reddy is a super stud who has successfully managed 10 Positions Of Responsibility without breaking a sweat. Known for his infinite contacts all over the world, he is fondly called Yellow Pages. He’s an unpaid guest at his own house, one who uses it for bed, bath, and nothing beyond. In addition to all these superpowers, he has got one more to his bag: Multilingualism.

Mayur Chhoriya (Toofan)
Junior Undergrad, Biological Engineering

When you’re so innocent that nobody doubts you even after visiting Guwahati and Goa. Having allegedly published his own research paper at such an young age, this born prodigy is also an alleged nobel laureate. Not to mention the fact, that Professors from Russia allegedly come all the way to Guwahati just to take him as an intern. His intern atrocities are worth lending your ears to.

Mohammed Faidh (Loveguru)
Sophomore Undergrad, Biological Sciences

Mizaan is known for making witty and waggish remarks at the right times. He is a gregarious person and is fun to be around. He is a huge bibliophile and at any random time of the day he can be spotted with a novel novel (yes, you read that twice) in his hand. His love for organic chemistry runs deep and he makes subtle puns on it. A self acclaimed Mysore Pak supplier. He is an animal lover (especially cats) and is passionate about photography and could be spotted with his DSLR during his leisure time.

Mousami Shinde (Mouse)
Junior Undergrad, Biological Engineering

The feminine reincarnation of Kumbhakarna [1], and has not one, but two soulmates: food and sleep. Can fall asleep at any given time of the day and is being studied for mutations in genes involved in circadian rhythm. The food is hypothesized to fuel her intuition and hence she is full of ideas. Her human touch has helped the team and the project be more ‘human’. Fondly known among the team for getting delicious Bakarwadi and homemade food from Pune, and giving free life fundaes late in the night.

[1] Kumbhakarna is a hulk-sized character from Indian mythology, known to sleep continuously for 6 months a year and eat for the remaining 6.

Nikhita Damaraju (Jinx)
Junior Undergrad, Biological Sciences

Nikhita, the second of the iGEM Damarajus, the Multitasker, the Queen of Code, the Mother of Codons, the Breaker of Plasmids, Descendant of the RFP transformers, the Unslept, the Madrasi of the Great Grand Forest, and the Laaaaaaameeeeeee. A huge fan of Carnatic Music and loves playing Violin.

Ramya Vijayram (Maami)
Junior Undergrad, Biological Engineering

Has the unique ability to diss out cut-throat replies on demand. Will go on random monologues at times (she’s a thespian) that delve deep into life’s deepest darkest secrets. A successful stage artist and director. One of the many reasons we call her Maami (aunt) is due to the fact that she is a teetotaller and drinks tea like water.

Shreyansh Umale (Otaku)
Junior Undergrad, Biological Engineering

The Dark Knight of the lab and our batch, his batsuit is a sweater in all seasons and Where’s Waldo socks (take that, mosquitoes!) Quiet, brilliant, the man is an expert in manga, anime and a range of pop culture. From the awesome Spotify playlist to his touted hard drive, he’s cool, man. Let's take a moment to remember he also finds the time to kill it (us) with the acads. His only weakness is milk, which is his one true love.

Srinath Muralidharan (Mylapore Beach)
Sophomore Undergrad, Biological Engineering

Srinath is a man of choice, for he chose to stay in institute hostels although his home is nearby. On any random day, he can be seen in the rooms of random classmates trying hard to convince how the courses are easy, while he studies away at his home over the weekends. An ardent fan of memes, and is very much responsible for upholding the team integrity by tagging the whole team in memes.

Vinayaknarendramoorthy (Biriyani)
Senior Undergrad, Biological Engineering

You’re probably figuring out how to pronounce his name, he is Vinayak Narendra Moorthy. Don’t ask him why he doesn’t separate the words, you’d rather watch some cat videos. People in the team think he doesn’t speak much but his friends outside say ‘Don’t let the volcano erupt! It’s better that he speaks less!’ More than academics one can discuss a lot about tv series with him. A friendly, humorous, lazy, facebook-addict, who doesn’t say no when someone calls for eating Biriyani (prefers parcels though), Lazy max!!

Advisors

Richa Srivastava

Richa is an MS research scholar at Prof. Guhan Jayaraman's Lab at the department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras. She works on synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. Her interests include genome engineering and editing.

Sandeep K Panda

PhD Scholar, procrastinator rex, thinks he's funny and yes of course, a blackbelt in Taekwondo! Known for giving us motivational talks on science and project management.

Instructors

Dr. Anantha Barathi Muthukrishnan

Dr. Anantha Barathi Muthukrishnan is an Institute Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras. She obtained her Doctoral degree in 2014 from the Laboratory of Biosystem Dynamics, Department of Signal processing, Tampere University of Technology, Finland. Her broad research interest is using in vivo single-molecule systems biology approach to understand fundamental cellular processes and further transfer this knowledge from an applied perspective. Her areas of research work include Transcription kinetics, noise in gene expression, Stress-related phenotypic plasticity, Microbial heterogeneity and Cellular aging in Bacteria at single-cell level. Her research achievements to date include 8 peer reviewed International journal publications and many international and national conference presentations. Her academic achievements include the TUT President’s Scholarship for her Doctoral programme. Her PhD thesis won the Distinguished Dissertation award for the year 2014 from the Scientific Foundation, Finland. She has also received awards for Best Publication, conference travel, and the OPAL Industrial research Award from various funding agencies during her PhD.

Dr. Shashi Bala Prasad

Dr. Shashi Bala Prasad currently works as Senior Scientist in Bioincubator, IIT Madras. She is a biotechnologist with skills in multiple domains (Molecular biology, fermentation-upstream & downstream, patenting, entrepreneurship). By education, she is a PhD (Biotechnology) from Indian Institute of Technology Madras and an M. Tech (Biochemical Engineering, IIT BHU). As part of IITM Bioincubator team, she helps bio-entrepreneurs starting their own company and incubate. She is also involved in executing research and developmental work of company sponsored projects. For skill improvement, she organizes and conducts workshops as part of IITM Bioincubator team. She is an accomplished molecular and synthetic biology person with extensive knowledge in protein expression and purification, recombinant DNA technology, metabolic engineering, advanced knowledge of molecular biology with emphasis on optimized strain construction (bacteria and yeast) and subsequent analysis by bioanalytical tools. She is equally competent in carrying out bioreactor studies as well as gene expression studies.

Team:IIT-Madras/Team

Team members

Advisors

Instructors

Principal Investigators