Evolving

“It took me a fair amount of effort to convince my parents that I was excited by chemical engineering and wanted to pursue it in my Bachelor’s. They had heard horror stories of chemical engineers working in factories and suffering from occupational health hazards and were therefore quite hesitant, but eventually they gave in. During my B.E., I discerned that the realm of chemical engineering had transcended traditional boundaries, evolving into a dynamic interdisciplinary field and my curiosity was particularly piqued by the fascinating realm of systems biology. Initially, I wanted to pursue my PhD abroad but the pandemic struck. I graduated B.E. from home, things became uncertain and there weren’t many options to apply for a PhD in other countries.

I gave GATE for the sake of it. Luckily, my score was good enough to apply to the IITs. My interview at IIT Bombay went well but when I saw that there were only 8 seats available in the category I had applied to, I was anxious and convinced that I wouldn’t make it. I told my parents that I would be taking a break for a year and that they had to support me. However, I did get selected at IITB.

I still had mixed feelings when I joined – I thought if I didn’t like it there, I would apply to universities abroad after 6 months or a year. As an engineer, I had very limited knowledge of biology, and evolutionary biology, from the outside, seemed the “farthest” to me. While I had almost decided to join another research group, my conversation with my now advisor, Prof. Supreet Saini changed my perception of the subject and I ended up joining his group.

My PhD research is a combination of both theory and experiments. I was skeptical of the latter because I had no idea what even a biological pipette was! My supervisor and one of my seniors were extremely patient and hand-held me throughout my learning process. I needed that support because I had ventured into a PhD without any form of research experience, unlike most others, and straight out of a Bachelor’s program. In experiments, I work on understanding horizontal gene transfer and among other techniques, use confocal microscopy in my experiments. I remember the excitement I had the first time I looked at a cell under the microscope – I jumped and was grinning from teeth to teeth. In theory, I have two projects – one focuses on building a theoretical model of sympatric speciation, and the other project is an attempt at explaining epistasis mechanistically, which has been challenging to convince people of.

Last year, I got a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, to work with Prof. Sergey Kryazhimskiy at UC San Diego, toward understanding the variations in structures of fitness landscapes. After having had the chance to see research in the US upfront, I believe that owing to better resources and streamlined research practices, it offers a conducive space for performing high-throughput experiments to answer interesting questions in my field. Culturally, I think a PhD is more like a job in the US, while in India, it is like an extension of college in many ways. There are pros and cons to both these settings.

In my academic journey thus far, I have been fortunate to have very supportive mentors, both in India and the US. I have, like several others, also had moments where I have wondered if this was all worth it, but it is my work and the encouragement from my advisors that have kept me going. I still remember how I was in tears when my first experiment worked – I often go back to a picture of mine that was clicked that day.

I am now nearing the end of my PhD and will be defending my thesis in the coming months, post which I will be moving to Canada to work as a PostDoc. As I look back, I am grateful for my friends, and the experiences of learning, adapting, coping, and trying to not lose my sense of wonder. I am also glad to have had the space and time for my interests outside of science; I continue to be excited by politics, history, and travel. My short-term task is to get my parents and non-biologist friends to understand my research, and my long-term goal is to contribute to the field of evolutionary biology in India. Although unplanned, my life has been super exciting so far!”

-Pavithra Venkataraman, PhD in Chemical

Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

Interviewed and written by Payel Das