Mentoring philosophy: I consider my trainees my colleagues and believe in mutual learning.

Fun fact: I won an Iron Chef award in grad school!

Bio: I am originally from Kolkata, India, where I completed a master’s degree in microbiology from the University of Calcutta. I then pursued doctoral training in the laboratory of Prof. Blaine Bartholomew at Southern Illinois University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Here, I focused on studying structure-functional relationships in the mechanisms of ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling using in vitro biochemistry and chemical biology approaches. The delightful experience of solving many puzzles in chromatin biology inspired me to take up a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Prof. Steve Henikoff at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. I developed epigenomics approaches to study how chromatin remodeling is targeted to specific genomic regions in cells and how they regulate nucleosome dynamics genome-wide. Besides research, I mentored graduate students and high school science teachers and participated in organizing lectures and workshops to promote DEI in science and academia. My research program is funded by a K99/R00 pathway-to-independence award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).