My PhD research focus

During my Ph.D. I tried to understand the pattern formation during embryogenesis. Pattern formation in biology has been studied for around a century now! This topic is especially well suited for someone like me who is peeking into a biological system coming from an engineering background (scroll below to look at my amazing journey!). Pattern formation involves interaction between different materials at chemical, biological, and physical levels. Various theories float in this field trying to explain pattern formation starting from Turing theory which came in the 1950s. Embryos show a variety of patterns before developing into a complete functional organism. Drosophila Melanogaster or simply known as the fruit fly, a tiny insect we often try to get rid of from our fruits, turns out to be a fantastic model organism to study pattern formation. It has a life cycle of 10 days, which makes it easy to study various stages of its development. Even more interestingly, its embryo is transparent which allows us to look inside it. And if that's not sufficient to amaze you, look at the images below showing mutant animals (recall X-men!), embryo patterns, and remember that this fantastic organism develops wings after living a few days as larvae! Imagine, one day you wake up with wings! FeWWW! If you are interested enough you can hear me talk about my research here!