Renu Balaji
Name: Renu Balaji
Qualification: Bachelor of Engineering, Biotechnology
Designation : Student
Department: Biotechnology
institute name : Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering
College address : Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, Shavige Malleshwara Hills, Kumaraswamy Layout, Bangalore - 78
Publication title: Journal
Paper title: Pattern of expression of Toll like receptor (TLR)-3 and -4 genes in drug-naïve and antipsychotic treated patients diagnosed with schizophrenia
Journal Name: Psychiatry Research
Volume: 285C
Issue No. : 285C
Month of publication: December
Year: 2019
Page No. : 112727
ISSN: 0165-1781
About Renu Balaji
Recently, I completed my Bachelors in Biotechnology at Dayananda Sagar College ofEngineering, Bengaluru and throughout my undergraduate program I have actively been a part of several research activities. During my 3 rd year, I undertook an internship at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Bengaluru (NIMHANS) where I was given an opportunity to independently work on a topic involving identification of the gene expression pattern of Toll Like Receptors in patients with schizophrenia which allowed me to publish my paper as a first author on the same project. I am also currently working on identifying drug like molecules from different sources to tackle tuberculosis through an involvement of computational analysis. I have won the second prize for poster presentation for the project titled “Identification of Flavone compounds from plant sources and Computer Aided Virtual Screening for putative drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis” in the All India Conference on “Advances in Plant Biotechnology-2020”, Prof. A. R. Mehta Memorial Lecture Award: ARMOUR 1and have also been selected for an oral presentation on my project titled, “Multi-target approach using combinatorial libraries and Computer-Aided Virtual Screening for putative drug-resistantMycobacterium tuberculosis” in the “National Conference on New Trends in Biotechnology and 14th Conference of Cytologists and Geneticists” held in Davangere, Karnataka. I have several memberships to my name including a life member of the Society of Biotechnologists of India, annual member of Association of Microbiologists of India and have been a former member of the youth run global organization AIESEC. In my undergraduate program I have constantly been a top performer by scoring the highest GPA throughout. I have also given a presentation in the Department of Human Genetics, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, on the topic, “Novel variants in the promoter region of the CREB gene in schizophrenia patients”, (July 2018). On World Tuberculosis Day, I was given a platform to present on the topic, “Current Perspectives of TB in India, their present Antimicrobial Resistance and Probable Solutions” at Indian Institute of Science, NIAS Campus, Bengaluru. In my 2 nd year, I volunteered to support the UN prescribed sustainable developmental goals by working on an environment protection project at Surakarta, Indonesia that mainly focused on climate change by alleviating problems related to global warming.