Organization
Open Health Systems Laboratory
Profile
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BiographyDid my Masters in Biotechnology and Ph.D. in the fields of Virology and Immunology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, Manchester, UK. The main area of my work included antibody engineering using Phage Display Technology. Joined the National Institute of Virology, Pune in 2005 and helped set up and headed the Avian Influenza Division at NIV in response to the first outbreak of Avian Influenza in India in 2006. Was part of the core group of scientists at the Microbial Containment Complex, NIV, responsible for work carried out in the BSL 3+ laboratories. I am working at present as Director, Biomedical Research at OHSL.
My research interests lie in the areas of Ayurveda in cancer and in immunotherapy. The emphasis at present is in creating a computable Ayurveda Knowledge System that will serve as a resource for Ayurvedic texts, Materia Medica, detailed digitised case histories, treatment, clinical trials. This will involve large to zeta scale supercomputing tools and expertise. Whole systems analyses and system biology approaches will play a vital role in understanding the mechanism of disease and its treatment paving the way for personalised and precision based medicine treating the patient in a holistic manner as described in Ayurveda. Understanding the interactions and interconnectedness of whole systems - from the genome to proteome to microbiome, the nervous, immune, endocrine systems and others - is the key to understanding how the body works to maintain balance and homeostasis in health, the disruption in disease conditions and therefore the road to therapy.
At OHSL we believe that the key to success is in Team Science or collaborative scientific programmes bringing knowledge and varied expertise together to address major challenges in the field of Biomedical Sciences.