Dr. Naresh Chandra Bal

Associate Professor

KIIT School of Biotechnology

Campus-11, KIIT University

Bhubaneswar, Odisha

Dr. Bal has more than 15 years of research experience in muscle and brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis. He also possesses more than 20 years of teaching experience in physiology and biochemistry related subjects at different levels. He has designed and performed studies on several transgenic mouse models using manipulation of thermogenic capacities of both the sites: BAT and muscle. In addition to these transgenic models he has also employed other strategies like pharmacological, surgical and diet-intervention to address questions related to thermogenesis, especially nonshivering thermogenesis (NST). He has authored more than 30 manuscripts on this topic including top-tier journals such as Nature Medicine, Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, Biological Reviews, Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), and Biochemical Journal. He has published 60 journal articles in total and his papers have been cited by top researchers in the field from all over the world. Currently, his H-index is 30 with total citation of more than 3000. For his pioneering research, he has been awarded with several honors including Physiological Genomics Fellowship, American Physiological Society (APS), USA; K01 Award from National Institute of Health (NIH), USA; Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship, Government of India; Early Career Research Award, Government of India. He serves as associate editor in Frontiers in Physiology and editor in Metabolites & Molecular Medicine Reports. Due to his scientific contribution he has been elected as the Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, UK.

Ms. Punyadhara Pani

Senior Research Fellow

KIIT School of Biotechnology

Campus-11, KIIT University

Bhubaneswar, Odisha

Ms. Punyadhara Pani is currently working in the laboratory of Dr. Bal in delineating molecular mechanisms of muscle nonshivering thermogenesis (NST) in birds. She completed her bachelors from Utkal University and masters from Ravenshaw University with Summa-cum-Laude. She served as a teacher and taught undergraduate students for about five years. Due to her excellent academic distinctions, she has been awarded with one of the most competitive pre-doctoral research funding called DST-Inspire fellowship from the Government of India. She is admirable in writing and has bagged first prize in several state-level competitions. She designed and developed her manuscripts which have been published in several renowned journals like Biological reviews, Biochemical Journal etc. Moreover, she has successfully presented her work in the form of poster and oral presentations in both National and International conferences for which she has got recognition and awards. She has done extensive research on skeletal muscle adaptation to environmental factors, pharmacological agents and cytokines leading to several recent publications in internationally reputed journals. For these studies, she has used different animal models including mammalian and avian providing biochemical/genetic insight for NST in the muscle.