Profile

Hi I am Neel and I am a 23 year-old man (read : man-child). I hail from a city called Calcutta in India and am currently doing my Masters by research in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Oxford. As intimidating as it may sound at first, my research predominantly involves sitting in front of a couple of computer screens and waiting for my code to run. Of course it involves a lot of waiting but that means I get to watch movies or even play cards in my lab when I am technically ‘working’. I grew up in a family of six with lots of parties, movies and general drama. I left home at 18 when I headed off to University in New Delhi and it was such a liberating, enlightening and inspiring experience for me. The three years of my undergraduate degree were the best years of life: I got to meet so many amazing people from different walks of life and learnt so much about Chemistry and the world. Currently I live with two wonderful friends at Oxford. They also happen to be chemists and they absolutely love complimenting my food. In my spare time, I enjoy ‘experimenting’ in the kitchen, going for strolls and watching horror movies. My ultimate goal in life is to do my part in making sure that every child around the world has access to nuanced education and I also really really want to go to space.

I work with a program called oxDNA which was developed by a group of PhD students working under my supervisor. We try to use it model DNA (Deoxy-Ribonucleic Acid) which is the fundamental building block of life. In a cell, DNA is stored inside the nucleus and conventionally one thinks of DNA as the storehouse for genetic information. In recent times, people have started using DNA as a structural tool and this has opened up the field of DNA nanotechnology where we exploit the unique helical structure of DNA to make different structural motifs like knots, wedges, tubes, robots, smiley-faces, bunnies, etc. These structures are then tested for their stability and if they are found to be stable, they can be synthesised experimentally. In biophysics, one often needs to measure forces on molecules and the tools available are ‘Atomic Force Spectroscopy’, ‘Magnetic tweezers’, etc. Without going into too much jargon, these techniques work on a single molecule at a time and apply small forces to observe any structural change. Recently, I have worked with a group in the US and we have developed a force-sensor for biomolecules made purely out of a DNA-Polymer hybrid called an Origami-Polymer Force Clamp. er