Sumana Chakravarty

Biography

Dr. Chakravarty received her B.Sc (Honours) and M.Sc. Degrees in Zoology from Centre for Advanced Study in Zoology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She was awarded Ph.D. in Zoology in 1997 from the same university under the area of Reproductive Physiology. Thereafter, after a short post-doc under Prof. G.P. Talwar at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), she joined prestigious University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, USA, for further post doctoral work. There she got excellent training in diverse area of biomedical research in particular the Animal Physiology and Neuroscience, first as a post doctoral fellow in laboratories of Prof. Robert Moss (1999-2000) and Prof. Raymond P. Quigley (2000-2004) and later as an Instructor, a junior faculty level position, in the Dept. of Psychiatry with the Chairman and renowned Professor Eric J. Nestler (2004-2008). During her long tenure (almost 10 years) in USA, she has been very successful and productive researcher as evident by excellent publications with her authorship in highly rated biomedical journals. Since 2004 she utilized state of-the-art molecular biology techniques to study the neurobiology of depression, anxiety, addiction and other related neuropsychiatric diseases using sophisticated transgenic and knock out mouse models. Dr. Chakravarty got the prestigious “Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship” from DBT, India in March 2009 due to her outstanding credentials and started her research lab at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) Hyderabad. Since then she handled several projects as principal investigator and developed international collaborative research efforts between CSIR and French researchers (Indo-French CNS drug discovery project) and CSIR and US researchers (CSIR-MAYO Partnership Program, CMPP), first as Scientist Fellow and then as QRS Scientist position at band IV. Currently she is working as Principal Scientist in Chemical Biology Department and guiding several Ph.D. students and project assistants in her neurobiology laboratory. In addition, she also serves NIPER, Hyderabad as guest faculty for Neuropharmacology teaching since 2012 and as associate professor in Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), New Delhi.

Research Interest

Her group's current research interests are Behavioral & Molecular Neuroscience, Neuropsychopharmacology, CNS drug discovery using psychiatric and neurological in vitro (neuronal cell culture) and in vivo models (rodents and zebrafish). In total, she has published 41 research articles and 7 other publications including book chapters and invited reviews published by Academic Press/Bentham Science/Elsevier, UK.