Abhinay’s four-year undergrad in biotech engineering taught him one thing- his math skills were more suited to putting together polymerase chain reactions than bioreactors. A Master’s project with Prof. Arnab Pain at KAUST, Saudi Arabia first got him interested in malaria parasites, leading to a PhD in collaboration with Prof. Richard Culleton’s lab in Japan. Between the tabboulehs and onigiris, Abhinay managed to set up a resource of phenotyped isolates, genomes and transcriptomes for an under-used rodent malaria parasite model, Plasmodium vinckei.
Shifting focus from genomes to genes, he joined Prof. Mike Blackman’s lab at the Francis Crick Institute, UK as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow. There, he explored the roles of various enzymes in Plasmodium falciparum, focussing on how schizonts - replicative forms of the parasites - rupture host cells to release daughter parasites. Infatuated with the beauty of these schizonts, Abhinay now leads MRC CDA-funded research on understanding how they are formed, rather than simply watching them blow up.
Outside the lab, Abhinay, originally from South India, puts his efforts into making the perfect dosa and brewing the perfect chai. He can also be found wandering through woods or hills, capturing passable photos and doodling until something resembling art emerges.