Ms. Pavithra Venkataraman is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. Her research is in the area of evolutionary biology. Specifically, she uses experimental methods to understand the evolution of proteins, and theoretical methods to understand the evolution of metabolic cooperation and sympatric speciation in a population.
Ms. Venkataraman completed her bachelor’s in chemical engineering from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru. In 2020, she was awarded the Best Outgoing Chemical Engineering Student by the Bangalore Chapter of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers. She enjoys exploring new places, cuisines and cultures. She also likes learning new languages.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, she will work with Prof. Sergey Kryazhimskiy to characterize the variation in the local structure of fitness landscapes to assess the predictability of evolution. This work is important to build our understanding of the process of evolution as a whole and has implications for pathogen evolution and human health.