HELLO, I'M
Shruti Ahuja
Prime Minister's Research Fellow (May-2021), IIT Bombay
Shruti Ahuja
Ph.D Research Scholar
Center for Research in Nano Technology & Sciences (CRNTS),IIT Bombay
About
I am a PhD student in Center for Research in Nano Technology and Sciences (CRNTS) department and Prime Minister's Research Fellow (May 2021) working under the supervision of Prof. Siddharth Tallur at the AIMS lab in Electrical Engineering department, IIT Bombay and Prof. Kiran Kondabagil at the Molecular Virology lab in the department of Bioscience and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay.
I have 3+ years experience as Founder's Staff, Lead for Research and Development in a MedTech spin-off from IIT Delhi. For my doctoral research, I am working on the development of an integrated and automated system for wastewater surveillance to strengthen the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. My research interest lies in point of care diagnosis of infectious diseases, CRISPRDx, molecular biology, microbiology, electrochemical sensors and biosensors.
Education
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)
2021- present | CPI - 9.09
Prime Minister's Research Fellow (May 2021)
Center for Research in Nano Technology and Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
Master of Technology (MTech)
2015 - 2017 | CPI - 9.29
Industrial Biotechnology
Delhi Technological University, New Delhi
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E)
2010 - 2014 | 78.08%
Biotechnology
SSBT COET, North Maharashtra University, Jalgaon
Experience
Sophisticated Analytical Instrument Facility, IIT Bombay
Teaching Assistant | 2021 - present
Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (LCMS-ORBITRAP)
Valetude Primus Healthcare Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi
Lead (Research and Development), Founders Staff | 2019-2021
Sr. Research Associate | 2018-2019
Jr. Research Associate | 2017-2018
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi
Research Intern | 2016
Research
Wastewater epidemiology has gained immense prominence since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic and several surveillance efforts are underway. It is an effective tool for targeting hotspot zones without the need for individual testing and contact tracing. Over the last year, several groups have used gold standard qPCR-based techniques in order to pilot surveillance methods globally including in India, Italy, and North America. qPCR, the current gold standard for testing is an expensive technique that needs sophisticated laboratory, skilled labor and expensive reagents. Apart from this, the existing workflow for wastewater surveillance is a tedious and time-consuming process that includes various steps such as water sampling, pre-processing, virus isolation and concentration, lysis, RNA extraction, and qPCR, thus, rendering real-time on-site surveillance impossible. Therefore, lower cost, integrated, portable, rapid alternative approaches are the need of the hour to allow wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 and strengthen our fight against the virus.
The field of electro-chemical sensors for nucleic acid sensing has been well established.The use of printed circuit boards (PCBs) conventionally used in the electronics manufacturing industry has been explored for Micro Total Analysis Systems (μTAS) platforms since early-1990s, however the focus for a large part of the previous three decades has been on demonstration of proof-of-concept PCB based lab-on-chips. Despite this, the technology is not as commonly adopted as screen printed electrodes, mainly due to challenges associated with impact of gold surface roughness on bio-recognition element immobilization and the need for additional processing steps to ensure reliability due to the use of copper in PCBs, which is susceptible to corrosion and hampers electro-chemical analysis. With suitable development, PCB electrode based electro-chemical DNA sensors could be of great relevance in the COVID-19 pandemic e.g. for mapping disease spread through monitoring of wastewater.
This leads to the objective of my thesis to develop an integrated microfluidic chip-sensor with a PCB based electro-chemical sensor for automated detection of SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater samples.
The utility of ENIG finish PCB sensor has been evaluated by detecting bacteriophage Phi 6 from environmental samples. Unlike electrodes with immobilised oligonucleotides that need low-temperature storage to retain sensitivity, or custom fabricated substrates for DNA sensing, the unmodified PCB electrodes have longer shelf life and no specific storage needs, and therefore suitable for developing automated sample processing and measurement solutions for deployment in LMICs.
Courses undertaken
BB 610: Biomedical Microsystems
BB 621: Biostatistics
BB 624: Microfluidics: physics and applications
EE 701: Introduction to MEMS
EE 617: Sensors in Instrumentation
BB 701: Research proposal
Publications
2022
Ahuja, S., Kumar, M.S., Nandeshwar, R. et al. Longer amplicons provide better sensitivity for electrochemical sensing of viral nucleic acid in water samples using PCB electrodes. Sci Rep 12, 8814 (2022).
Conferences
2022
Shruti Ahuja, M. Santosh Kumar, Ruchira Nandeshwar, Kiran Kondabagil, and Siddharth Tallur, "Size does matter: Longer amplicons provide better sensitivity for electrochemical sensing of viral nucleic acid in water samples using PCB electrodes" WRCB, IIT Bombay conference on Low cost diagnostic for affordable health, June 2022