Rohan Maddamsetti: Harvard Bound

It has been an outstanding year for Rohan Maddamsetti: he recently earned his doctorate in Zoology from Michigan State University, he was first author on a paper that earned accolades for being one of the top three articles published in the journal Genetics in 2015, and this fall he will start a postdoc at the Harvard Medical School.

An Indianapolis native, Rohan studied Computational Biology at Brown University. In 2009, he came to East Lansing to be a graduate student in the Lenski Lab. While at MSU, Rohan studied evolutionary biology in the EEBB program, he was affiliated with the BEACON Center for the study of evolution in action, and Integrative Biology was his home department. His dissertation focused on the evolution of laboratory and natural populations of E. coli.

As a postdoc under Dr. Debora Marks in the Systems Biology Department at the Harvard Medical School, Rohan will be working with fitness landscapes. Rohan explained, “At first, I will work on how the 3-D shape of RNA virus genomes (like HIV or influenza) constrains the evolution of the 3-D structure of the proteins they encode and vice versa.”

Throughout his tenure at MSU, Rohan has been inspired by Spartan scientists. “The most successful scientists that I know are hardworking, resilient, and generous with their time and support for their students, colleagues, and loved ones. One day I hope to be a professor at a research school like MSU. Go green!”