Shalaka Samant

About Shalaka Samant

Experienced industrial research leader with a proven record in conceptualizing and writing successful grant proposals.• Seasoned researcher with a proven record in the use of microarray-based, genome-wide approaches for identifying novel bacterial virulence genes. • Strong independent research experience as a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Medicine (bacterial pathogenesis) and University of Texas-Houston (signaling in macrophage development). • Extensive experience in microbial strain engineering to construct production strains for various industrial enzymes, therapeutic proteins, probiotic strain engineering and characterization and whole cell bio-transformations for green chemistry applications.• Extensive experience in writing / reviewing international journal articles. Specialties: Bacterial transposon mutagenesis, whole genome screening techniques involving the use of microarrays and bacterial virulence gene identification, aseptic techniques for bacterial cultures, construction and characterization of targeted knockouts in Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, microarray-based transcriptional profiling, DNA and RNA isolation, cloning, northern blot, PCR, quantitative real-time PCR, sequencing, recombinant protein expression and purification,SDS-PAGE.

Experience

1. Founding Scientist

   Kiwi Biosciences Fodzyme

   Jul 2021 — Present

Education

• University of Mumbai

  BS, Pharmacy

  1998 — 2002

• University of Illinois Chicago

  PhD, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology

  2002 — 2008