Assistant Plant
Resume:
Email: *.******@***.***
San Diego, CA 92122
Tel: 806-***-****
Megha Bhalla
OBJECTIVE
To obtain a full-time Scientist position involving advanced applications
of applied biochemistry
EDUCATION
2005-2010 Ph.D. in Biochemistry
Texas Tech University, TX
GPA: 3.98
2003-2005 M.S. in Chemistry (Honors)
Panjab University, India
2000-2003 B.S. in Biology and Chemistry
Ch. Charan Singh University, India
COMPETENT SKILLS
. Industrial experience in product development in a multinational
biotechnology company
. Enzyme kinetic assays and spectral perturbation titrations to map
protein-protein interaction sites
. Expression and purification of recombinant proteins in E. coli. under
aerobic and anaerobic conditions
. Column chromatography using FPLC along with Ni-NTA Affinity column,
POROS ion exchange column, Superdex 75 gel filtration column
(Pharmacia)
. Circular Dichroism (CD) analysis of enzymes in UV and visible region
. Site directed Mutagenesis, PCR, Bacterial transformation, Plasmid
isolation and Agarose gel electrophoresis
. Statistical data analysis
. Currently pursuing ADMET certification course in drug development
field
PROFESSIONAL & RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Internship R&D - Gene Regulation, Life Technologies Corporation -
May 2008 - Aug Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA
2008 Designed, executed and analyzed experiments for developing
improved and robust protocol for genome amplification in
human cancer cells
Quantification of amplified products using PicoGreen assay
Measurement of amplification bias using Real-time PCR
(Applied Biosystems)
Quantitative analysis of percentage amplified product using
pivot table and charts
Research Visit Plant and Microbial Biology Department, University of
Nov 2008 Leiden, The Netherlands
Performed Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC)
experiments (MicroCal VP-ITC) to study protein/protein
interactions by determining protein-binding parameters (N,
K, ?H and ?S)
Research Visit Plant and Microbial Biology Department, University of
May 2007 California, Berkeley, CA
Designed and conducted protein purification experiments
under anaerobic conditions
Research Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Texas Tech
Assistant University, TX
Jan 2007 - Dec Expression and purification of recombinant wild type
2007 protein and mutants involved in photosynthetic pathway in
Jun 2009 - Aug cyanobacteria
2009 Studied the effects of the mutations on the enzyme assays
Jan 2010 - Apr and protein/protein affinity by performing kinetic assays
2010 and spectral perturbation titrations respectively
Metal content determination using chemical analysis
Measured the changes in secondary structures of the enzyme
by performing circular dichroism (CD)
Mentored a Welch Grant summer scholar. Designed the project
- experiments and analysis of results, and trained the
intern in techniques of expressing, purifying and
characterizing the proteins.
Teaching Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Texas Tech
Assistant University, TX
Aug 2005 - Dec Managed undergraduate and graduate labs of 30+ students
2006 Led group discussions, prepared experiment set-ups,
Jan 2008 - Apr explained experimental procedure and computations, graded
2008 lab reports
Sept 2008 - May Courses taught - Biotechnology, Organic Chemistry, General
2009 Chemistry
Sept 2009 - Dec
2009
PUBLICATIONS
The interaction of spinach nitrite reductase with ferredoxin: A site-
directed mutation study. M. Hirasawa, J. N. Tripathy, R. Somasundaram, M.
K. Johnson, M. Bhalla, J. P. Allen and D. B. Knaff, Molecular Plant 2009,
2, 407-415.
COMPUTER SKILLS
MS Office Suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook), Windows OS, UNIX
RELEVANT COURSEWORK
. Advanced Molecular Biology, Nucleic Acids, Lipids, Bioinformatics,
Enzymes, Physical Biochemistry, Proteins, Multivariate Statistics
. Drug Metabolism (UCSD extension)
HONORS AND AWARDS
Awarded "Best Student Presentation", Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry, Texas Tech University - 2006
References available upon request
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