Niharika Pentakota

Lexington, MA ac0saq@r.postjobfree.com (781) 860 – 3505 linkedin.com/in/niharika-pentakota Actively seeking Coop/Internship opportunities

EDUCATION

Masters in Bioinformatics Jan 2016 - May 2018(exp) Northeastern University, Boston, MA GPA: 3.62

Master of Technology in Biotechnology July 2012 - May 2014 Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, TN, India GPA: 3.90 Bachelor of Technology in Biotechnology May 2008 - May 2012 RVR and JC College of Engineering, Guntur, AP, India GPA: 3.25 COMPUTATIONAL SKILLS

Programming languages: C, C++, Perl, BioPerl, R (Collecting,Storing and Retrieving Data) Tools: BLAST, FASTA, ClustalW

Perl:

Knowledge on building a BLAST database from a FASTA file

To Run BLAST and FASTA alignments from the command line

Performed parsing of BLAST and FASTA tabular output and converted it into GFF3 format

Performed CRISPR designing and off- target analysis BioPerl:

Planned a sequence project which includes estimation of cost of whole genome sequencing for a given genome

Performed genome assembly using ALLPATHS-LG and SOAP denovo2

Performed transcriptome assembly using Trinity, differential expression analysis and annotation for RNA-Seq Illumina reads Statistics for Bioinformatics:

Used an open-source program R to conduct standard statistical data analysis

Performed probability distributions like Monte Carlo Simulations, Statistical analysis, Hypothesis Testing and Regression Analysis on the data sets and its application in the field of Bioinformatics Collecting, Storing and Retrieving data:

Knowledge on collecting the data through web APIs, web scraping

Knowledge on SQL, MongoDB database

Parse XML documents

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Biotech Consortium India Limited - Trainee (R&D) Oct 2014 – Apr 2015 Tierra Seed Science Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad

Role: Standardization of protocol for anther culture of Tomato

Expertise in plant tissue culture

Studied the factors that influence the callus induction and standardized a protocol for tomato anther culture. Factors include genotype growth regulators, flower bud length (developed stages of anther), effect of cold treatment preincubation, growth regulators etc.

PAPER PUBLICATIONS

Lavanya Pothanaa,1, Lalitha Devia,1, Naresh Kumar Vennaa, Niharika Pentakotaa, Vivek Phani Varmaa, Jedy Joseb, Sandeep Goel Replacement of serum with ocular fluid for cryopreservation of immature testes. Cryobiology(2016), http://dx.doi.org/j.cryobiol.2016.09.169

ACADEMIC RESEARCH PROJECTS

“Exploration of US flight data for the year 2016” Jan 2017–Apr 2017 Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

Techniques used: R programming with the use of packages such as RSQLite, dplyr

Data is collected from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and loaded the data file into R

Created a database using RSQLite by initially connecting to a DBMS with required authorization

Conducted the analysis using dplyr

“Buffalo ocular fluid as serum replacement in cryopreservation of buffalo testicular tissue” Oct 2013–Apr 2014 CCMB - LaCONES, India

Techniques used: Graph pad for statistical analysis, Microscopy, Fluorescent microscopy, tissue sectioning, embedding, staining, Immunohistochemistry (Hematoxylin staining, Ubiquitin carboxyl terminal hydrolase (UCHL1) staining and Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) staining), DNA damage assay (TUNEL)

Investigated the effect of Buffalo ocular fluid in the cryopreservation of buffalo testicular tissue

Conducted the comparative studies on the effect of buffalo ocular fluid with that of fetal bovine serum in the cryopreserved buffalo testicular tissue to determine if ocular fluid is dispensable for cryopreservation.

“Efficacy of loading and release of catechin in Poly-Lactic Acid nanoparticles and Genotoxicity assay of catechin-loaded nanoparticles” July 2012 – Sep 2013

Vellore Institute of Technology(VIT) University, Vellore, TN, India Techniques used: Nanoparticles preparation, Comet assay, Onion root tip assay, Chick embryonic assay

Prepared the nanoparticles and performed quantitative analysis for the efficacy of loading of catechins into Poly Lactic Acid nanoparticles and its subsequent release studies under in vitro conditions.

Conducted genotoxicity assays of catechin-loaded nanoparticles

“Isolation, purification and characterization of thermostable Proteases from Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius” Dec 2011 – May 2012

RVR and JC College of Engineering, Guntur, AP, India Techniques used: SDS PAGE, DEAE-cellulose chromatography, Size-exclusion chromatography

Evaluated the crude extract from bacteria for proteolytic activity and purified the protein crude extract

Performed SDS and proteolytic assays

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

Won Dr. V. Murugan Memorial award for securing highest score among sixty students in Molecular Biology at RVR and JC college of Engineering, Guntur, AP, India.

Cleared BCIL (Biotech Consortium India Limited), a Government of India sponsored training programme and got placed as a Biotech trainee at Tierra Seed Science Pvt Ltd along with stipend. PRESENTATIONS

Paper presentation on “Efficacy of loading and release of catechin in Poly-Lactic Acid nanoparticles” in 5th International conference on “Science, Engineering and Technology (SET)” organized by the School of Information Technology and Engineering at VIT university, Vellore, TN, India.

Paper presentation on “Genotoxicity assay of catechin-loaded nanoparticles” in 6th International conference on “Science, Engineering and Technology (SET)” organized by the School of Electrical Engineering at VIT university, Vellore, TN, India.

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