Lund University

Faculty Member, Respiratory Medicine

Researcher

Lund Univeristy

Thesis Title: Evolution, Structure functional studies of antimicrobial peptides

About

I was born in the town of  Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, India, some three decades back. To be very frank my early childhood personnel interest was not in biology, instead was aeronautical engineering, and wanted to build a “perpetual motion flying machine”, a machine which doesn’t need fuel, instead builds it during the motion itself, a sort of intellectual machine.

There are two incidents which moved me to biology, first one, when i was young around 10 years, I read a news paper article which proves beyond any doubt for the first time that cancer can also be caused by “virus”. The second one, when I was around 14, was when I read a book “genetic engineering” by Sandya Mitra. To be modest, I don’t say that i understood everything at that time, but somehow it really fascinated me to explore more about biology.

With this sudden shift in interest, I decided to pursue my basic higher education in genetics, as I thought that, if you need to modify something, you should first understand how it is built. After having bachelor’s degree in genetics as major subject, just into adolescence, I moved to pursue biotechnology from University of Calicut, Kerala away from home in a totally new environment, new culture and most important was total freedom from watchful eyes of my parents.  During my stay at Calicut, apart from the biotechnology I have learned more about being modest, independent, surviving in new cultures and responsible for my own actions and decisions. 

Later having a master’s degree in biotechnology, I started to work as faculty in attempt to have some time to think and plan for the future. During this time, I got a chance to work with United Nations under a program called “UNDP for under developed countries”, which made to go to Ethiopia, Africa. I can say this was one of best experience until now I had. I got a chance to look on first hand “what exactly life is about, what is called fight for survival, what is happiness”. I can say for sure this experience has given me a goal and idea what to do in life.

With this unique experience I moved to Sweden, to do a Ph.d in Immunology on antimicrobial peptides under Prof. Artur Schimdtchen.  If any one ask me today or tomorrow , “can you name a person in your life, who is like Aristotle to Alexander or chanakaya to Chandragupta maurya”. Without any doubt, I will name him. He has taught me more than science, what are the qualities of a mentor or guide, what not should be  and should not be the qualities of a mentor, how to achieve your goals and dreams, the joy and happiness you get when you achieve your goals. 

Currently, I am at Lund University, Sweden doing my further research in the area of Infectious disease and peptide based drugs to treat them.

My research work in simple terms,
We are always surrendered by large pool of bacteria and other infectious agents, but still we fall sick rarely. Understanding why it is like that is my job as researcher; we know that our body protects us from disease causing pathogens with the help of antimicrobial or host defense peptides. So my interest is to develop these molecules into therapeutic molecules, so that people who are sick or immumo compromised can take them and enjoy the life to their heart content. 
Not only that I have wide ranges of other interests in the allied areas of biotechnology like developmental biology, enzymes, neurology, space biology, immunology , nano technology  also.

Personnel beliefs in professinal life

I strongly believe that there are two people, parents and teacher, in this world who can transform an individual into noble, intellectual, ambitious one. Therefore, the responsibility of teacher lies not only in telling what the latest things in science are, but also tell them to explore, take responsibility of social, economical and ecological consequences of his/her decisions.

With this in mind, we (I along with some friends who share same ideology), started a online advise group for student in biotechnology called “Biotech dhaba”, where we provide our suggestions and advice to students from various countries in the area of biotechnology to best of our abilities.

Contact Information