Neuroscience Archives

Anchal Sharma

Ms. Anchal Sharma is a Ph.D. candidate at IIT Delhi. Her research encompasses tactile perception of objects in the visually challenged. Drawn towards innovations exercising imagination, scientific thinking, and strong user empathy, she has mentored and participated in diverse social innovation projects and won two awards by IISc, Bangalore and IIT-Delhi with her team. She has led and been a speaker in events propagating innovation including those by AIM, NITI AYOG.

She completed her M.Des. in Industrial design (from SPA, New Delhi) and interned at GVIC, PepsiCo, India. She was acknowledged for her thesis work for integrating cultural spatial forms in a unique product using principles of light and shadows to educate children about unity. The project was sponsored by the Design Clinic Scheme by GoI and NID and was featured as a finalist in Toycathon 2021 and TISDC 2018. During her B.Arch. she emerged as a 2nd ranker both for her thesis work on ‘a school for experiential learning’ and overall 5-year academic performance.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, she will analyse how to better convey three-dimensionality in two-dimensional tactile stimuli. Although layered and complex, she believes with continual deep-work and problem-solving acumen, this work can profoundly advance and contribute towards accessible STEM education for those without vision.

She believes in a multi-faceted growth and commends the perseverance sports can bring to life. She has played Throwball at National level and won silver medal (Badminton) at college level. Being perceptive towards life, she exercises self-expression through art, writing, and short videos.

Vidita Vaidya

Prof. Vidita Vaidya is Professor and Chairperson, the Department of Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. Prof. Vaidya’s research group at TIFR works on understanding the neurocircuitry of emotion, its modulation by life experience, and the alterations in emotional neurocircuitry that underlie complex psychiatric disorders, like anxiety and depression. Her work delves into how the experience of early adversity can recruit pathways regulated by the neurotransmitter, serotonin, to shape the long-term programming of mood-related behavior. Her research team also investigates the mechanistic details of the influence of pharmacological antidepressants and serotonergic psychedelics on mood-related behavior, in particular the consequences on bioenergetics in neuronal cells.

Prof. Vaidya received her undergraduate training at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai and her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Yale University. Following postdoctoral fellowships at Karolinska Institute and Oxford University, she returned to a faculty position at TIFR in 2000. She was the recipient of the Infosys Prize in Life Sciences in 2022. She is committed to mentorship, equity and diversity in STEM.

Prof. Vaidya’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project is focussed on understanding the impact of serotonergic psychedelics on mitochondrial biogenesis and function in distinct limbic brain regions. Her work explores whether serotonergic psychedelics, through modulation of mitochondrial biogenesis and function, impact neuronal and synaptic plasticity, influence neuronal architecture and regulate mood-related behaviors.

Richa Singh

Dr. Richa Singh did her PhD in 2020 under the supervision of Dr. Manjari Jain at the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER) Mohali, Punjab. Her thesis examines the effect of three important environmental factors (light, temperature and ambient noise) on the acoustic signaling of a nocturnal ensiferan insect, Acanthogryllus asiaticus. After her PhD, she moved to the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi , to monitor bird populations using a machine learning approach. She is currently working as a p roject s cientist at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

Dr. Singh is a recipient of a DST-Inspire Fellow ship and has qualified for the UGC-NET examination. She is an Executive Committee member of the Ethological Society of India and has published her research work in reputed international journals. She has won various travel grants to present her work on international platforms such as the International Bioacoustics Congress Travel grant award from University of Sussex, UK, Association for the Study of Animal Behavior Diversity travel grant award from University of Konstanz, Germany, DST International travel grant, Government of India and Animal Behavior Society Diversity travel grant from University of Illinois, Chicago. She secured third place in the 3MT (3-minute thesis) competition in Behavior Conference at University of Illinois, Chicago, in 2019. She got the best oral presentation awards (National Conference on Behavioral Ecology, Gujarat, 2017 and Young Ecologists Talk and Interact, Assam, 2017) and the best poster presentation awards (Conference on Insect Biodiversity Studies, Kerala, 2016 and National Symposium on Behavioural Ecology, Varanasi, 2014).

Frog-biting mosquitoes and their host are confronted with unprecedented growing anthropogenic noise levels. It is unknown how such novel acoustic conditions will affect mosquitoes in detecting, recognizing, and localizing their hosts. As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow , Dr. Singh will use a neuroethological approach to understand the behavioral responses and underlying mechanisms of organisms under novel noisy conditions. In particular, her research will shed light on the effect of anthropogenic changes on vector-host interactions.

Sakshi Shukla

Ms. Sakshi Shukla is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), Mumbai. The aim of her Ph.D. thesis is to identify a biomarker to predict Levodopa Induced Dyskinesia (LID) in Parkinson’s disease patients based on multimodal neuroimaging, clinical and behavioral characteristics. She is one of the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN) Global Scholars selected in 2022 to participate in the online MRI graduate program and clinical neuroimaging course at Oxford University, UK.

Ms. Shukla has completed her bachelor’s degree in zoology (H) from Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi. Later, she pursued her master’s in medical biotechnology and graduated as a gold medalist from Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak. She has qualified exams such as CSIR-UGC NET JRF, GATE, BET, CEEB, IIT-JAM. Beyond academics, she loves to interact with people and acquire new skills. She is an outdoor enthusiast and loves to travel to natural places.

During the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellowship tenure, Ms. Shukla is learning newer techniques in medical imaging for movement disorders, such as Neuromelanin MRI, and NODDI (neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging). She intends to draw meaningful inferences from the collected data with the help of a clinical neuroimaging expert.

Shrikant R. Bharadwaj

Dr. Shrikant Bharadwaj trained as a vision scientist at the School of Optometry, University of California, Berkeley, and the Indiana University School of Optometry. As a DBT Ramalingaswami fellow in 2009, he established the Visual Optics and Psychophysics Laboratory at the L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) with the agenda to understand how the optics of the eye influences human visual perception. Dr. Bharadwaj uses a combination of experimental, behavioral, and computational techniques to address this research agenda.

Dr. Bharadwaj actively publishes his research work in international vision science journals, and serves on the editorial board of Nature’s Scientific Reports, Optometry and Vision Science, PLOS One (Public Library of Science) and the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology. He also served as a committee member on the WHO development group for refractive error interventions and was awarded the Jaggi Optometrist of the year award in 2021 by the Optometry Council of India.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Bharadwaj is working to understand visual perception in patients with an eye disease called Keratoconus. This disease distorts the eye’s cornea, causing profound loss of vision and quality of life in the patients. Through his research, Dr. Bharadwaj aspires to develop a comprehensive psychophysical assessment of visual functions in this disease, to dissect the roles of optics and neurology in vision loss using adaptive optics, and to optimize patient’s vision through personalized contact lens designs and perceptual vision training.

Mallika Chatterjee

Dr. Mallika Chatterjee is Assistant Professor at the Amity Institute of Neuropsychology and Neurosciences, Amity University, NOIDA. Her lab focuses on identifying molecular mechanisms underlying various neurodevelopmental phenomena and disorders, including autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia.

Dr. Chatterjee completed her B.Sc. in human physiology from Presidency College, Kolkata, her M.Sc. in genetics from Calcutta University, Kolkata, and her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the University of Connecticut Health Center (UConn Health), USA. During her Ph.D., she explored the genetic mechanisms underlying the development of the mouse thalamus – a sensory relay center in the brain. As a Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance Early Career Fellow (2013) at TIFR, she gained experience on in-vitro culture systems in addition to utilizing her in vivo expertise in determining signaling factor roles in forebrain development. Dr. Chatterjee joined Amity University in 2018. She has been developing a zebrafish facility there to understand neurodevelopment combining neurobehavioral, biochemical, and histological techniques. She has received Young Scientist awards from the Society for Neurochemistry, India and the Singapore Neuroscience Association. She has a keen interest in neuroscience outreach and has held brain awareness sessions on depression in Delhi-NCR schools, funded by an IBRO-DANA grant.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship project, Dr. Chatterjee is utilizing her expertise on zebrafish tracking to develop a high-throughput neurobehavior imaging facility in India. Specifically, her project is working to identify carbohydrate roles in neurobehavior to potentiate further studies for the amelioration of various neurodevelopmental disorders. She is also involved in teaching related graduate courses at Brown University.

Kirti Saluja

Kirti Saluja is a Ph.D. candidate at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), Haryana. Her Ph.D. research focuses on investigating the interaction between the heart and the brain in aging individuals and those with epilepsy, involving the utilization of cognitive experiments, multimodal neuroimaging, and a data-driven approach. She has presented her research at various national and international conferences and workshops.

Before pursuing her Ph.D., Kirti completed her BSc in biochemistry from the University of Delhi, and MSc in neuroscience from the National Brain Research Centre. During this period, she actively participated in an innovation project led by the University of Delhi in collaboration with IGIB, focusing on utilizing zebrafish as a biosensor for assessing the water quality of the river Yamuna in the Delhi-NCT region. Additionally, she contributed as a teaching assistant at the Neuromatch Academy for their computational neuroscience course.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, Kirti will is collaborating with Dr. Mohammad Dastjerdi, aiming to elucidate the connectivity between the heart and the brain in epileptic patients using stereo encephalography (sEEG) as the neuroimaging technique. This endeavor is expected to aid in comprehending mechanisms underlying the development of cognitive and/ or cardiovascular comorbidities in epileptic patients, potentially opening avenues for utilizing cardiac signals in predicting seizure onset. Kirti enjoys hiking, trekking, creating science-related comics, and engaging with diverse individuals.