Date: January 10, 2026
Time: 04:00 PM
Venue: Lecture Hall 2003, Block 7, IISER Berhampur
Flyer Link: Click here to view
Harnessing the power of Microbes for Health and Wellness
Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing, multi-omics technologies, and computational biology have revolutionized our ability to study these previously inaccessible microbial worlds. In this talk, I will highlight how large-scale microbiome data, integrated with computational and systems-level approaches, can be harnessed to uncover the functional roles of microbes in human diseases and disorders. I will further discuss how these insights are being translated into innovative strategies for health monitoring, diagnostics, and microbiome-informed therapeutic interventions, underscoring the growing potential of microbes as key drivers of
precision health and wellness.
Dr. Sharmila S. Mande, is a distinguished Indian computational biologist and bioinformatics expert, currently serving as Ayush Distinguished Scientist Chair with the Ministry of Ayush, Government of India and as Advisor for Life Sciences Research at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Research & Innovation, Pune. She earned her Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru in 1991, followed by postdoctoral research at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Netherlands) and University of Washington, Seattle (USA). Dr. Mande established and led one of India’s pioneering computational biology and bioinformatics research programmes at TCS, with significant contributions in microbiome analytics, large-scale biological data algorithms, and translational health applications, reflected in a substantial portfolio of patents and international publications. Beyond her roles at TCS and Ayush, she also holds academic positions as Guest Professor at IIT Gandhinagar and Visiting Professor of Practice at IIT Kanpur. Her work has been recognised through multiple honours, including the IISc Distinguished Alumni Award for 2025, and she is a fellow of major academies such as the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.
