Pushpanathan MuthuirulanPostdoctoral Researcher,
Section on Neuronal Connectivity,
Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Development,
National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (NICHD),
National Institutes of Health (NIH,
USA
Biography
Pushpanathan Muthuirulan is a postdoctoral researcher at the NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda MD working in the field of neuroscience, where his research has focused on developing state of art tools to map complex neural circuits that involves visual processing in Drosophila. He has several years of research experience in the antimicrobial drug discovery and development, Omics technologies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) and drug target discovery using flow cytometry. He studied Zoology (BSc and MSc) at the American College, India and subsequently gained industry experience as project assistant (2006) in Strides Arcolab Research and Development project on the production of antifungal agents against Candidiasis and Aspergillosis. He obtained his Ph.D. (2014) in Microbiology from Department of Genetics, School of Biological Sciences at Madurai Kamaraj University, India where he had identified a novel antifungal peptide, MMGP1 from marine metagenome and characterized its antifungal mechanisms with ultimate goal to develop therapeutic strategies for combating opportunistic fungal infections