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Shruti Muralidhar is a neuroscientist and science communicator. She is a founding member of IndSciComm, a collective formed to improve scientific awareness in India and help Indian researchers interact with the public. As part of her day-job, she works to understand how brains learn, remember and forget. When the lab coat comes off, she is interested in the intersections of science, neuroscience, policy and law. She is also committed to working towards making academia more diverse and inclusive and uses her writing to highlight issues such as the under-representation of women in science.
Abhishek Chari is a freelance science communicator and editor. He is a founding member of IndSciComm, a collective formed to improve scientific awareness in India and help Indian researchers interact with the public. Through IndSciComm, he continues to produce popular science communication across various media formats and languages, with a current focus on making science podcasts.
In his previous role as a science writer at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, he contributed to donor engagement and fund raising for neuroscience research. Christening a new bacterium, studying symbionts and helping teach cell biology are some of the things he did at the University of Utah, before his foray into science writing. His love for science fiction and his undergraduate education in biomedical sciences inform his interest in exploring how science and society are inextricably linked.
Collaborators and Contributors:
Navneet Vasistha: I’m a postdoc at the Biotech Research and Innovation Centre in Copenhagen. I study how changes during early brain development leads to neurological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. My experiments involve using human stem cell models as well as transgenic animal studies. I studied for my D.Phil from Oxford and got my Masters degree from University of Delhi. I was one of the founding members of IndSciComm and have experience in scicomm via twitter, blogs and face to face with small groups.
Swati Khare: I recently graduated with a PhD from the University of Florida. My final dissertation concentrated on the creation and evaluation of biological models for a rare neurological disorder called spinocerebellar ataxia 13 (SCA13). Part of my work was completed at a nonprofit organization (Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona). My masters degree is in biomedical engineering, also from the University of Florida, as part of which I studied Alzheimer’s disease. I enjoy scientific communication through podcasts and blogs.
Amrita Anand: I am a PhD student in the Genetics department at the Baylor College of Medicine. My thesis project focusses on identifying genetic networks that are important for reprogramming various inner ear cell types specifically into hair cells (which are important for hearing). For this, I employ mouse genetics and confocal microscopy to a large extent. I got my masters degree from IIT Madras and bachelors degree from VIT, Vellore. I like doing my scicomm by engaging actively with school children to talk about science, writing science articles and making podcasts.
Amrita Sule: I am a post doctoral researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University. My research is focused on DNA repair and DNA damage response in context of cancer therapy. I did my Bachelors and Masters from University of Mumbai, India. I trying my hand at science communication on social media via Twitter and Instagram as well as local science out reach events.
Arun Mahadevan: I am a PhD student in the department of Bioengineering at Rice University. In my current work, I apply an eclectic combination of long-term microscopy, image analysis and graph theory to study how stem cells transform into neuronal networks in a dish. I engage in science communication by writing short articles and blog posts for outlets like IndSciComm and Research Matters, and also by organizing local SciComm workshops in Houston.