Team:IIT Madras/Team

Mitan Sutradhar

The man behind the idea. A devoted biologist and a staunch meat eater, we are not surprised that he wanted to eliminate all toxins from his precious food. His life works in a binary system-food and sleep. Once in a while, the system crashes and you can see him make an appearance in the lab. When he is not luring others into mischief, you can find him immersed in research papers, carefully fine-tuning our solutions. He is (in)famous among professors for his brilliant attendance record. On occasions when he does attend classes, he manages to puzzle everyone, more so because of his jabber than his intricate questions. "WeCanNeutraliseShigaToxin" were his first inspiring (read incomprehensible) 'words' to our team. A reward of 100$ to anyone who can decipher his ramble in the first go.

Mitan is a 4th year Undergraduate in the Department of Biotechnology. His research interest lies in immunology and cancer biology. YouCanHearHimBlabberAt msmitans4@gmail.com. Beware! Don't steal his food. If you do, he will look for you, he will find you and he will kill you.

Namit Holay

Our team has had a long distance relationship with Namit when he had been whisked away by NTU, Singapore on an exchange program. We went through occasional rough patches but eventually made it through when Namit promised to spy on other iGEM teams for us. He seems to have a strong aversion to clothes and we wouldn't be too surprised if he dresses up in a sweaty shirt and skimpy shorts for a professional meeting. Ironically, he is as round as a drum but calls everyone else fat. In his free time, he tries to give ‘life advices' to whoever would listen to him.This is the time everybody claims that they have work to do and the lab becomes suspiciously empty. Don't get us wrong- he is perfectly capable of handing out some great advice. With prior experience and exposure to lab techniques, he leads the team ahead.

Namit is a fourth year Undergraduate in the Department of Biotechnology. He wishes to work on Cancer Biology in the future and has some illuminating views on Oncology. You can hear him preach at namit.sholay@gmail.com. P.S-Free advice for ze ladies!

Kanishka Waghmare

This little girl, oops, boy is involved in the Bioinformatics group of the team. He was an innocent boy till his summer intern in Germany, where he apparently ‘worked' on cocaine addiction. He claims to have tested cocaine on mice, but we are not so sure. His laugh invites funny imitations from all the members of the team ,at which he buries his head in his hands. When he is not checking out the release dates of the upcoming seasons of TV shows, you can find him working hard and picking up Computational Biology techniques.

Kanishka is a final year Undergraduate in the Department of Biotechnology. He wishes to work in the field of neuroscience in the future.You can tickle his neurons and hear him laugh at kanishkatks@gmail.com.

Mayank Choudhary

Introducing ‘Mr. Versatile' of the team. Be it PR, prowess in wetlab or drylab, he is your man. Throw a random quizzing question at him and he will answer it for you. He could be wrong, but he has an ability to convince you the other way. His ability to fall asleep anywhere, anytime is quite the envy of the other team-mates who haven't been bestowed with such a priceless talent. A lot of freshers are seen asking him for tips on how one can fall asleep. Open mouthed. In the first row. Right under the professor's stern eye. When he is not asleep in the weirdest of places, he is molesting Mitan or pranking some other team member . Either that, or he is helping out all the sections of lab work.

Mayank is a final year Undergraduate, currently studying gene expression in the Cardiovascular Genetics Lab, in the Department of Biotechnology. In the future, he plans to work on the molecular origins of diseases and the associated gene expression dysregulation and hopes to greatly impact human health, and diagnostics and therapeutics. Don't miss a chance to know our ‘know-it-all' by mailing him at mayank.nk.choudhary@gmail.com

Nandita Damaraju

Meet the kid of the team. Technically, Nandita should be junior to everyone else on the team, but she isn't. She says she was so smart in her school that they decided to promote her to an advanced grade but we don't really buy that explanation. We suspect she bribed the Headmaster of her school and just skipped a year. But don't make the mistake of making fun of her ‘tender age.' She is quite feisty and wouldn't hesitate to give you a whack or two.

She has a very sharp brain – so sharp that it extracts a double meaning out of almost every straightforward sentence! If you hear her giggle in the midst of a serious discussion, you can be sure that the "Mother of Double Entendres" has struck again! She is quite multi-talented as well – strumming a guitar, sketching a portrait, attempting to play football, writing cryptic codes in MATLAB – she does it all. Nandita is a final year Undergraduate in the Department of Biotechnology. She breathes Systems Biology and hopes to pursue it in the quest of establishing protein networks and modeling their interactions. Feel free to amuse the kid with a lollypop at nandita94@gmail.com. Wait, you can surely hear her giggle now.

Junaid Babu

If you want to know the trick of getting into a team - any team - anytime, then you have to take pointers from this guy. He possesses some super-valuable skills - the ones that poor teams like ours desperately want. And we didnt even have to bribe him with a guaranteed flight ticket to Hong Kong or a years supply of Coke! He was kind enough to come to our rescue without asking for much. He didnt even ask for this Bio, but this is the cheapest thing we can do for him, so we will do it! Junaid has single-handedly designed our entire Wiki page. We give him content and he makes a web page out of it! He is a real wizard. Also he seems to be totally not interested in biology. And yet he has been an integral member of our team albeit for a short time!

If you want to know anything about web pages and their design, feel free to buzz our man here. But be careful, he might just weave a 'web' around you that can leave you astounded!

Aman Kumar

One does not simply get positive clones and not be Aman. He is the cloning guru of the team. Rumor has it that he has never ever failed at cloning. Only if he could clone himself, the wet lab work would have been done at lightning speed.

In his free time, he watches lame comedy shows on television and laughs out loud at the pathetic jokes. Speaking of laughter, he owns the patent on the most unique laughing style for a grown-up. He laughs like a baby, his high-pitch cackle having the ring of innocence. But don't be deceived, he is equally adept at conjuring up mischief and troubling you till you get exasperated. In particular, he enjoys announcing that his experiment has failed when it actually has shown good results, just to see the disappointment on our faces. But we can let that pass, given that he is the work engine of the team.

Aman is a fourth year Undergraduate in the Department of Biotechnology working in currently working in the Cardiovascular Lab. In the future, he wishes to go past research at just the molecular level and instead, work at a platform where he can have a direct impact on human health. You can mail him your cloning queries at aman.amp003@gmail.com. But better be quick because he might just start charging for solving them, soon!

Nishita Mohan

No, she is not one of those girls who wanted to make a career out of modeling but was forced to study Biology by her parents. She is just one of those typically rare "beauty-with-brains". Well, I can at least guarantee about the beauty. She is also responsible for more than half of the team's publicity on online media. You see, she has a way of getting people to do her bidding. Nishita is your Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes – the kind of good girls they talk about in story-books. She also has an eye for fashion and likes to flaunt her exquisite wardrobe ever so often. She probably figures in the list of "Top 10 crazy Harry Potter fans" and loves everything about the series. When she's not immersed in a novel or out shopping, you can find her in a Bioinformatics lab working on some protein modeling.

Nishita is a fourth year Undergraduate in the Department of Biotechnology. She is totally into computational biology and wants to engage herself in Bioinformatics for the next five years of her life. Get candid with her at nishi.rachel1111@gmail.com. But guys beware, she might just release an Avada Kedavra on you. Yes, her charm can be killing.

Rohan Bendre

aka Avatar aka Dodo is the funny guy of the team. Blessed with a great sense of humor, his uncanny imitations of fellow labmates and department seniors keep us all in fits of laughter. He is often seen around in the lab singing tunelessly or shaking a leg (read potbelly). We believe he could have played the protagonist in the movie ‘Avatar' effortlessly- No animations/make up required (Imagine the amount of money the Directors could have saved!) When he is around, the team works with high spirits, laughing all the way at his clown antics. He is quite the Biology enthusiast and contributed to IITM iGEM along with Aman, for an entire summer. In his free time, he likes to read literature and short stories. We can assure you that he can give at least 3 synonyms for every muddling word in English. But make sure you have a dictionary to test him, this guy is born with a gift to prank!

Rohan is a fourth year undergraduate in the Department of Biotechnology. He is currently working in the Vascular Biology lab of the department. Get to ready to stimulate your happy hormones and laugh out loud when you mail him at robens004@gmail.com.

Nitish R. Mahapatra

Dr. Nitish R. Mahapatra is an Associate Professor at the Department of Biotechnology. His research interests include investigating the molecular genetics of cardiovascular diseases. He is especially interested in the role of single nucleotide polymorphisms in the onset and progression of cardiovascular dysfunction. He works on hypertension, in particular.

Karthik Raman

Dr. Karthik Raman is an Assisstant Professor at the Department of Biotechnology. His research interests include Systems and Synthetic Biology, Metabolic Engineering, Metabolic Network Analysis, Computational Modelling and Simulation of biological Networks.