Muthukumaran Venkatachalapathy

Born and raised in Pondicherry, India, Muthu studied Biotechnology at PSG College of Technology and the Indian Institute of Technology. His fascination for travelling motivated him to win a DAAD Siemens scholarship and helped him secure a PhD position at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology, Germany. During his PhD, he mastered DNA recombinant technology, protein engineering and advanced microscopy to develop live cell technologies such as protein interaction arrays and molecular activity painting. He mentored six bachelor’s and one master’s students during his PhD. After that, he won a Fulbright scholarship and developed super-resolution imaging techniques at the Indian Institute of Science and the University of Chicago. Muthu worked for Novartis in the medical communications and innovation department for two years. His excitement towards Biotech entrepreneurship and Protein degradation field made him come to Yale and work with Prof Craig Crews for 18 months. At our lab, Muthu will be co-developing an innovative high throughput screening assay to measure lysosome mediated protein degradation with MoDEs. Additionally, Muthu is a Blavatnik associate at Yale Ventures and organizes YBC’s Job treks for Yale students. Apart from microscopy, Muthu enjoys traveling, reading books, learning musical instruments, and playing badminton