Richa Karmakar

Assistant Professor, Biotechnology

Phone: +91-44-2257-4145

Email: rkarmakar@iitm.ac.in

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Experience

May 2022 – To Present: Assistant Professor

Research Areas

• Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic chemotaxis
• Microfluidics based lab-on-chiptechnologies
• Biophysical aspect of cell-cell and cell-materialinteraction

Selected Journal Publications

• Karmakar R*, Tyree T*, Gomer R H, Rappel W J. (2021). Cell dispersal by localized degradation of a chemoattractant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 118(6): e2008126118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008126118.

•Karmakar R*, Karanam A*, Tang M, Rappel W J. (2024) Eukaryotic chemotaxis under periodic stimulation shows temporal gradient dependence. Physical Review Letter. 133: 068401.

• Karmakar R. (2021) Stateoftheart of bacterial chemotaxis. Journal of Basic Microbiology. 61(5):366-379(Corresponding author). https://doi.org/10.1002/jobm.202000661.

• Karanam A R, He D, Hsu P K, Schulze S, Dubeaux G, Karmakar R, Schroeder J, Rappel W J. (2021) Boolink: a graphical interface for open access boolean network simulations and use in guard cell CO2signaling. Plant Physiology.kiab344. https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiab344

• Karmakar R, Schich C, Kamprad N, Scheller V, Gutierrez E, Groisman A, Rappel W J, Tarantola M. (2020). Novel micropatterning technique reveals dependence of cell-substrate adhesion and migration of social amoebas on parental strain, development, and fluorescent markers. PLoS ONE. 15(7): e0236171. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236171.

Research Projects

  • Lab-on-a-chip device to detect Urinary tract infection and sepsis.
  • The interplay of cell-cell and cell-substrate adhesion in eukaryotic chemotaxis.
  • Understanding of the dynamics of biofilm formation exploiting cellular motility.

Patent Details

Richa Karmakar, Subramaniam Pushpavanam, Diksha Mall, Saranya Gopalakrishnan. (2024) ‘Method and device for bacterial detection and antimicrobial susceptibility testing’, Indian Patent Application No. 202441003092. (Applied)

Awards & Recognitions

• DBT/Wellcome Trust (UK) India Alliance Early Career Fellowship, 2021.
• Full scholarship for Scientific Teaching Short Course 2020 given by PoorvuCenter for Teaching and Learning, Yale University, CT, USA.
• Excellence in thesis work award for the best Ph.D. thesis in IIT Bombay for the year 2014-2016.
• R. G. Manudhane Ph.D. excellence award for the most outstanding Ph.D. thesis in the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay for the year 2015-2016.
• International Travel Grant (2015) from the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India.
• International Travel Grant from the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India(2015).
• Foreign travel fellowship (2014) from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay to present research work at the 58th Annual Meeting of Biophysical Society, 2014, San Francisco, California, USA.
• Travel Grant in 2013 and 2014, from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa, Japan to attend workshops.
• Best Poster award at the Eighth National Symposium on Complex Fluids (CompFlu-2014), JNCASR, Bangalore, India.

•TrendSetter Award 2024, Energy Consortium, IIT Madras, 2024.

•Travel Grant; 76th APS-Division of Fluid Dynamics, Washington DC 2023