After earning a bachelor’s degree in Veterinary Sciences and Animal Health (BVSc) in 2007, Namita went on to pursue a Master of Veterinary Microbiology from GADVASU, India. Her Master’s research on the molecular and histopathological diagnosis of avian oncogenic viruses in poultry brought her two national awards.
In 2013, she was conferred a doctoral degree in Animal Biotechnology that concluded with her research findings on expression profiling of apoptosis-associated genes in canine mammary tumors. Right after her graduation, Namita worked as Assistant Professor of Animal Biotechnology and taught the courses of Animal Cell Culture, Animal Genetic Engineering, and Molecular Immunology.
A year later, she moved to the USA and joined as a research assistant in the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic lab. There, she worked on next-generation sequencing and data analysis with an emphasis on viral metagenomics. Driven by her deep interest in virology, she studied for the ‘American College of Veterinary Microbiologists (ACVM) board exam’ and in Dec 2018, she was awarded ACVM Virology- diplomate status by the board.
In 2019, she joined the center for genome architecture at Baylor College of Medicine, where she got the opportunity to work on two very diverse projects; one of which was focused on the development of NGS-based diagnostic for SARS-CoV-2, and the other was to understand the crucial part of CTCF transcription factor that potentially interacts with cohesin protein to form chromatin loops.
An author and co-author of many peer-reviewed articles and a reviewer herself, Namita enjoys editing and reviewing scientific documents. She is interested in science outreach to the general audience. At the same time, she intends to communicate novel scientific discoveries to researchers and academic professionals. In her spare time, she loves to read and spend time with her daughter and family.