0000-0002-7010-9154 About
Sneha has recently completed her PhD studies at RMIT University, Australia where she worked alongside environmental consultants and civil engineers in collaboration with EPA, Victoria in Australia's largest urban renewal development program (FBURA) of Melbourne CBD at the Fishermans Bend precinct. The site which is currently undergoing redevelopment is contaminated with elevated concentrations of toxic heavy metals and other organic pollutants. Consequently, her research aims to assess the level of contamination as well as help develop mitigation approaches in the groundwater of Fishermans Bend by understanding how the natural groundwater microbial community adapts and responds to environmental stress to further understand their potential to drive biogeochemical changes in the overall carbon cycle which largely impacts the global climate change. This research is critical for designing effective restoration strategies to rehabilitate and thus protect groundwater which otherwise may pose a potential risk to future anticipated residents. This work intends to reveal novel insights of the microbial community structure, diversity, and function which can help towards developing a future blueprint. It may also contribute to risk mitigation and better management of remediation strategies for other contaminated sites around the world. Consequently her work is novel, innovative and highly significant.
At ground level, Sneha is a passionate researcher with strong research ethics and moral principles. Her research interests include (but are not limited to) studying contaminated environments including Groundwater (PhD), Industrial Effluents (Masters by Research) and contaminated soil (B.Sc Honours) by applying traditional as well as cutting-edge molecular biology techniques such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and utilizing a suite of genomic technologies and bioinformatics tools.
Her previous research highlights include the isolation of novel and hitherto unreported species of bacteria and new strains of fungi from industrial effluents and studies on the various biotechnological potentials of these isolates including the microbial synthesis of gold and silver nanoparticles, plasmid profile analysis, extracellular enzyme characterization and bioremediation of heavy metal ions from industrial effluents using biosorption. All the novel bacterial and fungal culture isolates have been deposited at an internationally recognized microbial culture collection center at Microbial Culture Collection (MCC), National Centre for Cell Science, Dept. of Biotechnology, Pashan, Pune, India. Sequence data of novel isolates were also submitted at NCBI, GenBank to acquire unique GenBank accession numbers subsequent to which new strain designations were given to them.
Employment
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RMIT University CS Sessional Academic2019 - 2019
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RMIT University Academic Support Coordinator/ CS Officer/Assistant2019 - 2019
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RMIT University Researcher2015 - 2017
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RMIT University PhD Research Scholar
Education
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RMIT University PhD (Doctor of Philosophy)2017 - 2023
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University of Mumbai Master of Science (by Research)2009 - 2014
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Vidyasagar University B.Sc (Honours) Microbiology2005 - 2008
Projects & Funding
Projects & funding information is unavailable.
Publications (13)
- The Microbial ecology of groundwater at the Fishermans Bend urban renewal area in Melbourne, Victoria Save
- Role of Pigment in the Stress Response of Serratia Rubidaea isolated from Annona Reticulata Save
- Biodiversity Characterization of Bacterial and Fungal Isolates from Gold Electroplating Industry Effluents Save
- Microbial Biodiversity Characterization of Electroplating Industry Effluent and Studies on Biotechnological Potential of its Bacterial and Fungal Isolates Save
- Novel bacterial isolate Achromobacter sp. ss2 Save
- Novel bacterial isolate Bacillus sp. ss-6 Save
- Novel bacterial isolate Macrococcus sp. ss-4 Save
- Novel bacterial isolate Staphylococcus sp. ss-1 Save
- Impact of Radiation Technology on Human Health and Environment Save
- Third Golden Era of Microbiology Save