Experience

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram

• India
• Higher Education
• 300 - 400 Employee

• Postdoctoral Research Associate

  • Apr 2017 - Present

  Currently investigating the effect of multi-sensory information in the decision making mechanism of tropical butterflies. Successfully completed two projects and published the results in International peer reviewed scientific journals. Mentored six master students and three summer students in various projects addressing information processing in bees and butterflies.

• Doctoral Student

  • Jan 2011 - Mar 2017

  For my PhD I used a comparative approach to investigate the visual ecology of tropical and temperate bees and demonstrated the significance of sensory biases and learning in their decision making mechanisms. I also investigated flight activity of nocturnal carpenter bees in Bhimashankar wildlife sanctuary in Pune, India demonstrating that light intensity and lunar phase does not affect their foraging activity. My findings have been published in international peer reviewed scientific journals.

• Graduate Teaching Assistant

  • Jan 2012 - Jan 2013

  I have taught introductory courses in Ecology and Evolution and Introductory course in Animal Behaviour for undergraduate students at IISER-Thiruvananthapuram. I have also designed short projects in Behavioural Ecology and supervised undergraduate students for the field course in Ecology.

• Technical Assistant

  • Jun 2009 - Dec 2010

  Designed and taught lab courses in molecular biology, biochemistry and microbiology for undergraduate students and helped in conducting lab exams and grading.



University of Exeter

• United Kingdom
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Visiting Reserach Fellow

  • Jun 2011 - Sep 2012

  During PhD, as part of a grant from the Royal Society, UK visited University of Exeter where I successfully established protocol to test visual learning in restrained European honeybees and demonstrated the importance of motion and behavioural context in colour learning by bees. My research also demonstrated that spontaneous colour preferences are flexible and is affected by experience in bumblebees.



Rajiv Gandhi Centre For Biotechnology (RGCB)

• Summer Trainee

  • Nov 2006 - Jun 2007

  Using Bioinformatics tools I identified a novel gene from a 4.3 Kbp gene fragment from local isolates of the Tuberculosis bacteria and by modeling the protein of this gene ’in silico’ I demonstrated that this protein is important in pathogenesis. This study was submitted as my Msc. Dissertation.