Organizing Secretary

Dr. Indrajit Sahu is a Protein Biochemist and Molecular-cell Biologist. He has been working in the field of Ubiquitin-Proteasome-System (UPS) for the last 14 years. His research mainly focuses on protein homeostasis in human diseases and development. After finishing his PhD in Cancer biology at Advanced centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC)-Tata Memorial Centre, Navi Mumbai he joined Prof. Michael Glickman at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, for his first Postdoctoral research in Ubiquitin-Proteasome biology. During his tenure at Technion he received three prestigious Postdoc fellowships (Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship, EU; FEBS short-term Fellowship, EU; and Daniel-Turnburg/Welcome trust short-term Fellowships, UK). In 2021 he joined Prof. Alfered Goldberg at Harvard Medical School to continue his research on UPS. Thereafter in 2022 he worked with Prof. Jarrod Marto & Prof. Sara Buhrlage at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, HMS to learn small molecule based-drug discovery against deubiquitinase enzymes for cancer. Dr. Indrajit Sahu joined SRMIST in during April 2023.

Dr. Raji Lenin is a biochemistry and molecular biology specialist with 10+ years of expertise in in vitro and in vivo experimentation in type 2 diabetes and its complications. Her research spans around discovering new paradigms in the ever-evolving field of type 2 diabetes, with a keen focus on endoplasmic reticulum stress -induced disease pathology. She have proven records of science writing and grant management skills as displayed by a key role in securing a $65K USD from various funding agencies in the USA for her postdoctoral work (2016- 2019) as an independent principal investigator. Dr. Raji Lenin joined SRMIST in during April 2023.

Dr. Piyush Agrawal holds a Ph.D. in the field of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from CSIR-IMTech, Chandigarh, India, supervised by Prof. G.P.S. Raghava. His doctoral research primarily delved into computer-aided drug design, with a focus on the computational aspects of protein-ligand interactions. In addition to substantial contributions to methodological advancements, Dr. Agrawal developed web-based resources and user-friendly machine learning tools for predicting therapeutic properties of ligands.

For his Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dr. Agrawal joined Dr. Hannenhalli’s lab at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA, where he extensively explored cancer genomics. His postdoctoral research was centered on unraveling tumor heterogeneity, deciphering molecular mechanisms underlying metastasis, and studying responses to drug treatments.

In April 2024, Dr. Agrawal assumed the role of Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences, SRM Institute of Science & Technology, Chennai, India. His research group, the “Computational and System Biology” lab, is dedicated to leveraging AI/ML-based computational approaches to analyze multi-omics data, aiming to elucidate mechanisms associated with cancer metastasis, drug toxicity, and identification of potential biomarkers from various imaging modalities (such as H&E and IHC staining). Additionally, the lab investigates splicing events in host-microbe interactions.

Dr. Agrawal collaborates closely with researchers at both international and national levels. Notably, he collaborates with Dr. Hannenhalli at NCI, NIH, USA, focusing on various aspects of cancer genomics. Additionally, his collaboration with Dr. Patiyal and Dr. Mukherjee at NCI, NIH, USA focuses on investigating the mechanism of alternative splicing in cancer metastasis. Moreover, Dr. Agrawal collaborates with Dr. Sharma at IIT Hyderabad, concentrating on the development of AI/ML tools for exploring properties associated with peptides derived from microbes. Furthermore, he collaborates with Dr. Singh at the University of Delhi, with a broad focus on chemoinformatics.