"I am from Tripura (A state in India). I did my Bachelors from BIT Mesra and Masters from IIT Kharagpur in India. I decided to pursue my PhD from the US and applied to a bunch of universities and as we already know ABE is #1 in the US so Purdue was one of my top schools. I was always interested in working in biomass conversion so while exploring more about ABE at Purdue, I came across LORRE and the research done at LORRE aligned with my interest. I joined in August 2021 as a PhD student under Dr. Ladisch. The most enjoyable thing about LORRE is that we have diverse projects and we are able to work on them depending on our interests so even though I joined the lab to work on biomass, I shifted my focus to health because of my background in Biotechnology. Most important aspect is the help I received from the people in the lab when I shifted from biomass to health. Recent news: I received a fully sponsored acceptance to BIOPRO World Talent Campus in Denmark that will be held in September of this year. It is a one week workshop in biotech manufacturing sponsored by Novo Nordisk Foundation and BIOPRO."

–Riya Debbarma