Dr. Divya Vashisht
Officer on Special Duty
Dr. Divya Vashisht
Officer on Special Duty
Dr. Divya Vashisht is presently the Officer on Special Duty at the Office of PSA to the Government of India.
She earned her Ph.D. from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, under the mentorship of Prof Rens Voesenek. Her research focused on the genomic response of Arabidopsis, a model plant, to various stress conditions. She also received training in bioinformatics at the University of California, Riverside during her doctoral studies. Her post-doctoral research at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Plant Molecular Biology in Vienna, Austria, centred on identifying the role of microRNAs in embryo development.
In her professional journey she has worked with both National and International start-ups in the field of genomics. In 2018, she took on the role of Next Generation Sequencing Marketing Manager at Genewiz, U.S.A. Upon returning to India, she became the CEO of the National Genomics Core- CDFD, Hyderabad, an establishment of the Department of Biotechnology India, which provides genomics services and solutions to national academic and research institutes. With expertise in both short-read (Illumina) and long-read (Nanopore) sequencing technologies, her team has made significant contributions to various genomics projects, including the nation’s genomics surveillance program INSACOG, epigenetics, metagenomics, forensic genomics, and diverse genome sequencing projects.
She has held the position of Vice President-Research and Projects at Redcliffe Lifetech Pvt Ltd and served as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Life Sciences at Gurugram State University.
Dr. Vashisht has authored numerous research papers in the fields of genomics, plant biology, and developmental biology and also serve as reviewer in scientific journals.