Never too late

“Coming from a small town named Jind in Haryana, that had never seen a proper airport, the opportunity to be. accepted and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to attend a conference in the US on Neisseria research in 2014 was a huge opportunity. After my Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology and a research oriented Master’s programme in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, I was armed with the necessary skills to pursue PhD. I was originally enticed to teach and when I got the opportunity to be an Assistant Professor at a community college in Kurukshetra University, I readily accepted it. But my conference in the US turned out to be a game changer and directed me towards a PhD. Motivated by the conference topic, I chose to do my PhD in the same realm. Had I been exposed to a different topic, I might have chosen a completely different domain for my research. Keeping an open mind to new areas and having the confidence in my own skills to explore has helped me immensely during my PhD journey. Since I had little exposure to experimental research in my field, my supervisor and I decided to embark upon the research journey within the world of bioinformatics and computational biology of sexually transmitted diseases and related pathogens.

In a country like India, awareness about sexually transmitted infection is very limited. Especially women in rural areas have no idea that they even have any problems or…