I am a final year graduate student with Dr. Tapomoy Bhattacharjee at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. I work at the interface of soft matter biophysics, mechanobiology, and bioengineering.

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My PhD research pioneers an understanding of complex environments as active regulators of living systems. I leverage the universality of physical principles to traverse across biological scales, and ask how different environmental cues and constraints affect life forms at the single cell, tissue, and organismal level.

 

To accomplish this, I engineer sophisticated 3D experimental platforms that mimic natural habitats - soil, mucus, tissues - to study cellular physiology, behavior, and identity across diverse mechano-chemical milieus. These tools allow me to explore some of the most exciting new questions in biophysics and cell biology.

 

My work has yielded fundamentally unique insights on how microenvironments act as selective pressures on growth (Nature Communications, 2024), physically regulate cell division (bioRxiv, 2025), alter motility patterns (PRX Life, 2025), dictate morphological transitions (Small, 2025), influence pathogenesis (bioRxiv, 2025) and reprogram internal cellular states (bioRxiv, 2026).

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Together, my research demonstrates how purely physical environmental properties potently influence living systems - independent of species identity or molecular pathways. These efforts advance a key interdisciplinary paradigm - that even complex biological systems can be dissected using engineered platforms and elegant physical models, revealing unprecedented insights on the design principles of life.​