Profile

I have traveled from the hottest area of south India to the cold Aberdeen for my research degree.  I have been to Croatia, France, and Portugal as a part of my research (all travels and were free!!!).

I work part-time in a care home with elderly people.  I enjoy working for them. It is amazing to know how people lived their lives in the past and what do they think about our technologies now.

I love traveling to countries and new places with friends.  When I have free time, I do enjoy cooking, watching horror movies.

My focus is to discover medicines for bacterial/fungal infections, cancer, and other illness.  I work with mushrooms, bacteria, and fungi to get the medicines.  I go with my supervisor to collect mushrooms in the Scottish highlands.   Bacteria are isolated from Atacama desert and fungi are from the Red Sea, Egypt.  I am in charge of an instrument called mass spectrometry.  We analyze our samples from the microorganism using this instrument. Very helpful indeed.

In addition to the research, I guide undergraduate, postgraduate students with their research projects and in the teaching lab.  Even some high school students come to our lab for an internship and I show them what we do to get the medicines and how the instruments work in our lab.  During examinations, I do some invigilation too.

I travel to cities and countries for courses and to present my work where I meet other researchers and get to know their work; when relevant we collaborate.

My typical day starts with coffee and ends with coffee.  I walk to the university as I am living closer.  I work either in the lab or analyze data, it depends which needed to be done on that day.  Every Friday, I run the instrument (you remember it right! it’s mass spectrometry) for the entire lab.  Sometimes, I have to come to the lab at the weekend to make sure the instrument is running without error.

Chemistry lab where I am settled is away from the microbiology lab so sometimes I have to carry a heavy box of stuff to the microbiology lab to work with.

When undergraduate students start their course, I will also get busy.  I need to demonstrate in the teaching lab for them.  I do not get enough time to do my work on these days.  Every week we present our progress to our supervisors and other researchers in the lab.