Kasturi Mitra

Prof Kasturi Mitra joined Ashoka as a DBT- WellcomeTrust Senior Fellow. She ran a federally funded research program as an independent faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA. There, she also directed an undergraduate program fostering student learning from hands-on experience towards forging customized learning paths. Her educational training is from Presidency College (Calcutta) for BSc, Calcutta University for MSc, CCMB (Hyderabad) for PhD and NIH (Bethesda, USA) for postdoc. Her long standing research interest is in the cellular organelles called mitochondria that are classically known as ‘the powerhouse of the cell’. Originally, mitochondria were bacteria (prokaryotes) that got integrated into the eukaryotic cells during the course of evolution, and took control of various homeostatic functions of the eukaryotic cell. Her research has been pioneering in identifying various novel aspects of mitochondrial biology in various cell types including stem cells. Her lab takes a combinatorial approach involving quantitative cell biology, biochemical and genetic tools in probing the role of mitochondria in health and in diseases like cancer.