MS AMRITA DEBNATH

Biography

I have been a PhD student in the Physics department at the University of Aberdeen since 1st of October 2024. 

After pursuing undergraduate and master's degree in Physics, I earned prestigious scholarships and fellowships in India, including success in in competitive exams such as GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) and CSIR-NET (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Eligibility Test) in Physics. Additionally, I qualified for DAE (Department of Atomic Energy) Graduate Fellowship Scheme which enabled me to pursue a master's in technology program at one of India's premier Institutes of Technology.

Following my postgraduate studies, I worked as a Scientific Officer at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Visakhapatnam, India from September 2009 to July 2013. I successfully created microfabrication facilities for passive optical components and also established in-house grating fabrication facilities for mass spectroscopy.

Afterwards, I worked as a research assistant in the Physics department at the University of St Andrews. During this research tenure, I developed new skills in nanofabrication and cleanroom techniques. 

Current Research

Research Proposal: Multi-component Organ-On-A-Chip (OOC) system for neurotoxicity assessment. 

The project is a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen and Syngenta Ltd, a world leading sustainable agricultural innovation and technology company. We propose developing an in-vitro pesticide toxicity screening system comprising of complex and bespoke microfluidic cell culture systems for a range of relevant cell types. The project will use complex microfluidic divided in-vitro cultures to enable the formation of neuromuscular junctions, with each cell type maintained in cell-type-specific environments. Using in-house facilities, the experiments will adapt the system for studies on various configurations, including other tissues from human, rodents, and insects.

The project has three major aims:

1. Testing existing classical classes of commercial pesticides from Syngenta for off-target actions on our existing mammalian neuromuscular junction system.

2. Development of novel chips, using standard photolithography and soft lithography techniques, for positive control with neurons from relevant pest species, such as insects and rodents, for comparison of dose-dependent effect with human neurone susceptibility.

3.Study of other relevant human systems, such as glutamatergic and GABAergic neurone cultures or gut-brain organoids.