I got my PhD in Biochemistry from the National Institute of Immunology at New Delhi (India). My thesis was about delineating the biochemical properties of sickle cell haemoglobin in a specific context. Subsequently, I joined the Fink lab at University of California in Santa Cruz (UCSC, USA) as a postdoctoral fellow where we were characterizing α-synluclein’s role in Parkinson’s disease. An unplanned set of events led me to my current field of Astrobiology. My love for this field was nurtured at the Deamer lab in UCSC. I finished my postdoctoral stint with a post doc at the FAS Center for Systems Biology at Harvard (Cambridge, USA) prior to joining IISER Pune in 2012. In our lab, we are working to help discern the series of events that might have led to the origin and evolution of early life on prebiotic Earth.
Principal Investigator
Prof. Sudha Rajamani
Current Lab Members
Anupam Sawant
Postdoctoral fellow
I completed my doctoral studies in chemical biology from the IISER Pune in 2016. My doctoral research was aimed at the development of robust and modular labeling methods to study RNA function in vitro and in cells. I joined the COoL lab at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune as a postdoctoral fellow in September 2016 where we are working on the synthesis and characterization of putative ribonucleoside precursors that are potential ancestors to modern nucleobase analogs.
Raya Roy
Graduate student
For PhD, IISER Pune seemed the best fit for me and thus have joined the COoL lab as a PhD grad student in Jan 2021. I am primarily interested in understanding the role amino acids and peptides might have played in the early evolution of life. In this regard, I am currently trying to understand how amino acid and nucleotides might have reacted in a one pot experiment and how this could have led to the modern-day emergent properties such as translation.
Souradeep Das
Graduate student
I completed my bachelors from University of Calcutta and masters from Maulana Azad College, under University of Calcutta, both degrees are in zoology. Now, I became a member of COoL Lab family at IISER, Pune in the new year of 2020. I am interested in understanding, functionalization and evolution of protocell membranes, towards transition from non-living to living chemical systems.
Udita Bandyopadhyay
Graduate student
I have completed my Master’s in Zoology from Maulana Azad College, affiliated to The University Of Calcutta. I joined the COoL lab in January 2023. I am very enthusiastic about the translational approach of prebiotic chemistry towards synthetic biology. I am trying to understand how non-enzymatic template-directed replication may have happened in the prebiotic milieu. Apart from academics, I love trekking, listening to music, singing, and maybe cooking!!!
Gauri Patki
Graduate student
I have completed my M.Sc. in Biochemistry from M.S. University, Baroda. Being a beginner in the field of Chemical Origin of Life, I am excited by the question of how the transition from chemistry to biology happened. In particular, I am intrigued by the idea of nonenzymatic template-directed replication under early Earth conditions. Besides doing science, I love origami, playing badminton, and writing biological science for a general non-biology audience.
Alumni
Dr. Niraja Bapat
Current position: DST-WOSA, University of Hyderabad.
Dr. Manesh Prakash Joshi
Currently NASA Postdoctoral fellow at Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Chaitanya Mungi
Current position: Project Coordinator, STEM Ready Project, SAC, IISER Pune.
Dr. Sikha
Dagar
Currently Post-doc at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Susovan Sarkar
Currently Post-doc at University of Texas at Austin.