Ph.D. candidate in Plant Pathology and Computational Biology at Purdue University. Working on candidate pathogenicity genes in fungal pathogens of plants, adaptive evolution of pathogenicity gene families in fungi, molecular characterization of pathogenicity genes using heterologous expression systems. Side projects in which I participated in my lab include comparative genomics of extremophilic fungi in collaboration with JGI.

I am very interested in applying my knowledge in bioinformatics on astromicrobiology studies. I am particularly interested in plant-microbes interactions, RNAseq data from experiments conducted under microgravity conditions, comparative genomics of extremophilic microbe species and their application to understand adaptation to extreme conditions in earth and in space. I want to learn and explore about astromicrobiology and the possibilities of analyzing different types of bioinformatics data from experiments conducted in space.