I am originally from Nepal and came to the United States for my undergraduate studies. I graduated from the University of Louisville in 2011 with a B.S. in Chemistry with a Biochemistry concentration. I went to graduate school at Purdue University and earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2016. During my graduate studies, I structurally and biochemically characterized a yeast ubiquitin protease involved in lysosomal degradation of cell-surface receptors mediated by the macromolecular ESCRT machinery complexes. After graduate school, I worked as a molecular biologist in a biotech company focused on discovering and enhancing DNA promoters that regulate gene expression until 2018.  At the same time, I also taught Chemistry as an adjunct faculty member in a community college in Oakland, CA. I then started as a North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of North Carolina Asheville, where I not only taught general chemistry and biochemistry courses but also trained and conducted research alongside undergraduates investigating the rotary mechanism of a biological macromolecule ATP synthase.  I joined the Chemistry Department at Berea College in 2020 and am excited to be here to fulfill my teaching interests and lead students in research. My research will be focused on exploring key interaction sites of ATP synthase to understand the elegant choreography of ATP synthesis and hydrolysis and inform future drug development.

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry; upcoming sabbatical in 2027-28; started at Berea College in Fall 2020.