Dr Somenath Bakshi

Somenath Bakshi is a new University Lecturer in Synthetic Biology. He is a single molecule biophysicist by training. He did his PhD in University of Wisconsin Madison under Professor James Weisshaar – developing super-resolution imaging technologies to study central cellular processes in microbes. After finishing his PhD, he moved to Harvard University for his postdoc with Professor Johan Paulsson. During his postdoc Somenath developed high-throughput timelapse imaging technologies of single microbes in controlled complex growth-conditions. He has also developed a novel self-erasable fluorescence barcoding system, which enables harnessing the throughput for boosting multiplexing capabilities, without any need for cloning and sequencing. Though most of his work has focused on methods and approaches to synthetic biology, he remains interested in quantifying the dynamics and control of natural circuits. In fact much of the work from his postdoc focused on real biological circuits, studying circuits involved in stress-response regulation and their impact on persistence of microbes towards antibiotics.