Priyanka Mishra
Priyanka is from India and currently resides in the beautiful city of Cologne, Germany. While looking for a career that offers exciting problems to solve, she joined National Institute for Science Education and Research in Bhubaneswar for her Integrated M.Sc. degree. Although, from a distance, she hadn’t fully grasped the extent of problem-solving involved with biology, she soon realized that biology is a vast ocean with an ever-expanding set of exciting, challenging questions. She recognized her love for understanding how plants, the ever so immotile creatures, are so effectively in charge of their growth and survival. Upon realizing the power of plant science in the fight against world hunger, she made it her goal to look for approaches to increase crop yield. As a first step, she joined the group of Jun. Prof. Maria Albani at University of Cologne in October 2014 for her doctoral studies. Currently, she is trying to understand clonal propagation by adventitious rooting in the perennial plant Arabis alpina. When she is on a break from the bench, she participates in science outreach programs. In a secret bid to increase the workforce in the field of plant biology, she mentors school kids and introduces them to the fascinating world of plants. She also loves to travel and explore the history, food, and music of different cities.
Barsha Tripathy
She was born in the Temple City of Bhubaneswar and brought up at several places in India. Ever since she was a child, she had always dreamt of becoming a scientist. This dream led her way back to Bhubaneswar, and she completed her Integrated M.Sc in Biology from the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER). Her M.Sc dissertation was on Human Genetics where she was looking into genetic factors that lead to Recurrent Spontaneous Abortion. She is currently pursuing PhD in Structural Biology from NISER, working with her Guide Dr. Rudresh Acharya on deducing the structure of a class of virus encoded membrane proteins called viroporins and is learning to design proteins de novo. She prefers to stay highly organized, at all times and is obsessed with perfection, cleanliness and fashion. Barsha, who sometimes writes under the pen name ClumsyPerfectionist, loves to read books, crush candies and has a knack for music. She has a keen interest in science journalism and aspires to bring science to the common man as she sternly believes that ‘anybody can understand science when the language is simplified enough’.
Anjana Krishnan
A native of the capital city of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, Anjana K received her undergraduate degree in Medical Laboratory Technology from Government Medical College, Trivandrum one of the prestigious medical colleges in Kerala. Soon after finishing her bachelor’s, seeking a platform to increase her knowledge in the boundless world of microorganisms, she ended up in the invisible world of viruses. She went on to pursue her Master’s degree in Clinical Virology from Department of Virus Research, Manipal University. She joined the same department as Research Assistant in a research project entitled “Hospital-based Surveillance of Acute Febrile Illness in the Western Ghats region of India” funded by CDC, Atlanta, USA. She is extremely interested in the field of infection biology with special emphasis on public health and perhaps emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, public health and molecular medicine is the triangle for her future research direction.
