Communication Fellow Alum
Krishna is a ChemE graduate student in the Chakraborty lab, at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. Originally from Chennai (in India!), Krishna received his B.Tech (Honors) in Chemical Engineering from IIT-Madras, where he imbibed a strong love for cryptic crosswords, Indian classical music, and theoretical physics. Currently, his work aims to unravel the mechanisms that enable different cell types of an organism to robustly maintain their identity, by studying function of cell-type specific gene-regulatory DNA elements called super-enhancers. To achieve this, Krishna develops theoretical models of super-enhancers, by integrating ideas from statistical physics, chemical engineering, and molecular biology. Much of his work is motivated and subsequently validated through collaborations with experimental biologists at the Koch and Whitehead Institutes. Inspired by the power of inter-disciplinary science in tackling classically untenable problems, Krishna is deeply interested in exploring communication strategies that spur and enable efficient exchange of ideas across various disciplines. Outside of science, Krishna enjoys long bike rides and hikes, reading historical narratives, and the occasional dabble with​ poetry.