Venkat grew up in Chennai, India and moved to Boston, USA to do his PhD at Tufts University under the supervision of Dr. Nikhil Nair. During his PhD, he worked on building regulatory systems in yeast for non-native nutrient detection and consumption. After graduating, he worked at a biotechnology drug discovery company that used genome mining approaches to discover drugs from filamentous fungi.

At Bactobio, Venkat works closely with both the Compound Discovery and Microbial Generation teams to increase the production of valuable metabolites of interest.

Outside of work, Venkat’s interests include reading, cooking, hiking and board games.