Dr. R Aswati Nair

Biography

Dr. Aswati did M.Sc in Biotechnology from Department of Biotechnology, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) and completed her Ph.D (Biotechnology) in 2006 from Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB). She was rank holder in M.Sc, had qualified CSIR-JRF, GATE and ARS-NET conducted by ASRB, Govt. of India. During her doctoral research, she was awarded Young scientist award (Biotechnology) in the XVII Kerala Science Congress and Dr. T. R. Sahu award in XIV Annual Conference of IAAT. After working for a brief period as Lecturer (on contract) in Department of Biotechnology at University of Kerala, she pursued her post-doctoral work at RGCB as CSIR-Research Associate and later joined as Lecturer on regular post in 2008 in the Department of Biotechnology, Goa University. In Jan. 2009, she joined NIT Calicut as Assistant Professor (regular post) in the School of Biotechnology and had been working there until June 2016 when she joined CUK as Associate Professor. She had completed five research projects as Principal Investigator funded by DBT, DST, NITC-FRG and KSCSTE with DBT and KSCSTE-sponsored research projects being multi-institutional with collaborators from RGCB and JNTBGRI respectively. Her research primarily aims at understanding the molecular mechanisms of plant-pathogen interactions using Zingiber zerumbet-Pythium pathosystem as a model in view of the unique metabolic architecture and obscure information available for this wild ginger taxon. Her group is involved in generating genomic/metabolomic knowledge towards unravelling the molecular basis of defense by studying induced resistance mechanisms, Oomycete pathogenesis, metabolic profiling of chemical defense and secondary metabolite pathway analysis. She has published 17 research papers in peer reviewed journals and three book chapters. She has supervised 8 B.Tech dissertations and one doctoral thesis in the above areas. Currently four students are pursuing Ph.D under her guidance. She has actively taken up various professional/academic responsibilities besides coordinating three International conferences, one National conference and one workshop.

Research Interest

Plant resistance mechanisms, Oomycete pathogenesis, Chemical defense and Metabolic profiling, Endophyte mediated resistance, Biosynthetic potential of endophytes