Our People

Hey, everyone! I’m Kanika, born and raised in New Delhi, the capital city of India. I did my undergrad at IIT Delhi in Biochemical engineering and Biotechnology. I then moved to the US in 2014 to pursue my PhD at UC San Diego, where I used massive electron microscopes to peek at tiny bugs! I uncovered novel mechanisms in bacterial cell division and jumbo phage replication in Pseudomonas. After that, I did my postdoc at Stanford and UC Berkeley, studying host-microbe interactions. I’m excited to be a part of the Ott Lab, managing scientific projects and collaborations in host-virus interactions. I am passionate about open science and scientific communication. Outside the lab, I enjoy hiking, yoga, Friday night Hindi movie marathons, reading non-fiction, and crocheting! During the pandemic, I took on a project close to my heart – making life-sized crochet portraits of Indian women scientists.