STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
I have always been very much inspired by the famous quote by George Bernard Shaw “People see things; and they say, why?But I dream things that never were; and I say, why not?” We witnessed remarkable technological advancements that created opportunities of growth in newer dimensions which were out of paradigm of human imagination before.
I want to be a part of this exciting pursuit of unlocking various scientific advancements for betterment of mankind and I envision PhD as a stepping stone in this direction. As describing myself, I would say that I posses a great diversity of professional experience. I am a scientist with a flair for the arts. I am a person with technical aptitude and interested in its utilization in scientific advancement to understand disease mechanisms and develop therapeutic cures to improve the lives of patients. I also have a passion for creativity and always participated actively in extracurricular activities and have been awarded many a times at various forums. Donations have always been a passion for me to help needy. In addition, my work experience in a leading biopharmaceutical company has helped me become more confident with independent analytical and scientific abilities and also develop my leadership and communication skills.
Over the past 3 years, I have been working with Piramal Life Sciences, Mumbai, India (formerly known as Nicholas Piramal). Here I got a chance to enhance my skills in virology both in vivo and in vitro efficacy studies. These involve a lot of long, complex and intricate statistics and the application of basic math skills. Apart from this, I also got an opportunity to establish many in-house cell based assays and develop both viral and bacterial infection animal models. My continuous commitment and sincere dedication was rewarded when my research work was part of a US provisional patent filing for an antiviral phyto-pharmaceutical. This work has also been presented in 2010 at the 50th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy held at Boston, MA.
Before my employment with Piramal Life Sciences, I have also worked with Sun Pharmaceuticals Advanced Research Centre, Vadodara, India in its Research and Development division for almost 3 years. Here I gained in vivo research experience carrying out acute, sub acute to repeated dose chronic studies in both rodents and non-rodents. I also established and successfully performed many genotoxicity studies under GLP compliance. I have also drafted various study protocols and technical reports as per USFDA guidelines for Investigational New Drug (IND), New Drug Application (NDA) submission, for new chemical entities (NCEs) and different formulations, which have been approved by USFDA. I have experienced in monitoring overseas genotoxic studies from one of most reputed Switzerland Contract Research Organization (CRO) which gave me invaluable international project management experience.
After completion of my Master’s degree in Microbiology from M.S. University, Vadodara, India; I was shortlisted by SPAN diagnostics, Surat, India. SPAN diagnostics is one of the leading diagnostics in India which has pioneered HIV AIDS detection kits in India. I got the opportunity to work with this company for about a year which was a real enriching experience. My project focused on developing a comb test for HIV AIDS which was in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, India. I was also part of project teams developing multiple infectious disease diagnostic kits to help reduce medical costs without compromising at its specificity in developing countries.
During my Masters program in Microbiology I had worked on Biological and Physiological Studies on Radio Resistant Organisms, as my research dissertation topic under the guidance of Professor Anjana Desai (former Head of Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology Centre, M. S. University, Vadodara, India). My research focused on isolating radio resistant organisms by primary screening from different soil samples. It was followed by secondary screening using up to 25KGy of gamma radiation dose. Later on, survival kinetics of these selected isolates has been evaluated in presence of U.V. and gamma radiation. Biochemical tests were performed to check the phylogenetic relation of these isolates with those of known standard radiation resistant strains. I also standardized and worked on different cell lysis protocols like French press, ultrasonication and using glass powder. This exercise helped me to obtain and measure the release of various stress enzymes like superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase. Standardization of cell lysis protocol was one of the most important aspects of this project. As these radiation resistant organisms have a very thick 6 layered cell wall and to obtain active enzyme from such organism was quite a challenge. I also performed activity staining on native PAGE so as to check and compare the presence of oxidative enzymes (like SOD) and other isoenzymes with that of the standard strain.
To conclude, my diverse experience has developed my analytical and scientific skills enormously and I would like to pursue a PhD program to further my research career and realize my lifelong dream. When my experience blends with my strong positive attitude towards science it endorses my research career perfectly. My dream of developing scientific techniques and efficient research models to conceptualize the fundamental mechanism underlying human diseases in order to develop therapeutic cures against them can be realized by pursuing a PhD in Phamacology. My search for the best match of objectives, passions and dreams has ended at your University with the best of fundamental research in all avenues of Pharmacology. Looking at the resources, facilities and opportunities available to students, I am confident of accomplishing my research goals here. I am sure, I am well suited to the University’s requirements with the right goals and attitude towards educational and research excellence.
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