Narmada Sambaturu

Assistant Professor, School of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Binghamton University, State University of New York.

PhD, Mathematical Biology, Indian Institute of Science, India.

MSc, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

BE, Computer Science and Engineering, Visveswaraya Technological University, India.

Research Interests

Mathematical and Computational Biology, Systems Biology, Epidemiology, Vaccines and Immunotherapy, Multi-scale Modeling, Immune Response, Host-pathogen Interactions.

The focus of my research is developing novel, multi-scale, data-driven methods to study infectious diseases and heterogenous host immune responses. Some of my goals are:

- Understanding how the host affects pathogen evolution,
- Improving the prediction and control of epidemics,
- Identifying the pathways and genes involved in a disease, and using this knowledge to design interventions,
- Rational vaccine design,
- Designing public health policies which maximize welfare while accounting for issues like different degrees of adherance to interventions, and disparities in access to healthcare, and
- Anticipating novel epi/pandemic-causing pathogens and zoonotic transmissions.

Awards

- Best Student Paper Award, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM).
- Travel awards: BIBM (2015); RECOMB/ISCB Conference on Regulatory and Systems Genomics (2017); Lakshmi & Aravamudan Student Travel Fund, Office of Development and Alumni Affairs, IISc (2018).
- One of 50 students selected from all over India for participation in a summer camp in Biotechnology at M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India (2003).
- All India Rank 25 in Secondary School Certificate (Std X) (2003).

Research Funding

- Director's Postdoctoral Fellow, Laboratory Directed Research & Development, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA (2021).

Publications

- Tin Phan, Jessica M. Conway, Nicole Pagane, Jasmine Kreig, Narmada Sambaturu, Sarafa Iyaniwura, Jonathan Z. Li, Ruy M. Ribeiro, Ruian Ke, and Alan S. Perelson. Understanding early HIV-1 rebound dynamics following antiretroviral therapy interruption: The importance of effector cell expansion. PLOS Pathogens, 2024 20(7): e1012236. [pdf, bib]
- Ushashi Banerjee, Adithya Chedere, Raksha Padaki, Abhilash Mohan, Narmada Sambaturu, Amit Singh, and Nagasuma Chandra. PathTracer comprehensively identifies hypoxia-induced dormancy adaptations in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 2023. [pdf, bib]
- Vishal Rao, Ushashi Banerjee, Narmada Sambaturu, Sneha Chunchanur, R. Ambica, and Nagasuma Chandra. Pressured cytotoxic T cell epitope strength among SARS-CoV-2 variants correlates with COVID-19 severity. HLA, 2023. [pdf, bib]
- Emily J. Fray, Fengting Wu, Francesco R. Simonetti, Carolin Zitzmann, Narmada Sambaturu, Carmen Molina-París, Alexandra M. Bender et al. Antiretroviral therapy reveals triphasic decay of intact SIV genomes and persistence of ancestral variants. Cell Host & Microbe 31, no. 3 2023: 356-372. [pdf, bib]
- Piyush Agrawal*, Narmada Sambaturu*, Gulden Olgun, and Sridhar Hannenhalli. A path-based analysis of infected cell line and COVID-19 patient transcriptome reveals novel potential targets and drugs against SARS-CoV-2. Frontiers in immunology 13 2022. (*equal contribution). [pdf, bib]
- Narmada Sambaturu. Multi-scale modelling of immune response and disease spread: methods and applications. PhD Dissertation. 2021. [bib]
- Narmada Sambaturu, Vaidehi Pusadkar, Sridhar Hannenhalli, and Nagasuma Chandra. PathExt: a general framework for path-based mining of omics-integrated biological networks., Bioinformatics 37, no. 9 (2021): 1254-1262. [pdf, bib, GitHub]
- Narmada Sambaturu, Sumanta Mukherjee, Martín López-García, Carmen Molina-París, Gautam I Menon, and Nagasuma Chandra. Role of genetic heterogeneity in determining the epidemiological severity of H1N1 influenza. PLoS Computational Biology 14(3) (2018): e1006069. [pdf, bib]
- Narmada Sambaturu, Madhulika Mishra, and Nagasuma Chandra. EpiTracer - an algorithm for identifying epicenters in condition-specific biological networks. BMC genomics 17.4 (2016): 543. [pdf, bib, GitHub]
- Narmada Sambaturu, Madhulika Mishra, and Nagasuma Chandra. EpiTracer - an algorithm for identifying epicenters in condition-specific biological networks. Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM). IEEE Computer Society, 2015. (Best Student Paper Award.) [pdf, bib, GitHub]
- Narmada Sambaturu. Towards handling repeats in genome assembly. MSc Dissertation. 2014. [pdf, bib]
- Jayavel Sridhar, Narmada Sambaturu, Radhakrishnan Sabarinathan, Hong-Yu Ou, Zixin Deng, Kanagaraj Sekar, Ziauddin Ahamed Rafi, and Kumar Rajakumar. sRNAscanner: a computational tool for intergenic small RNA detection in bacterial genomes. Plos one 5, no. 8 (2010): e11970. [pdf, bib]
- Annapurna P. Patil, Narmada Sambaturu, and Krittaya Chunhaviriyakul. Convergence time evaluation of algorithms in MANETs. International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security 5.1 (2009): 141-149. [pdf, bib]

Conference and Workshop Presentations

- Narmada Sambaturu, Macauley Locke, Zena Lapp, Carmen Molina-París, and Thomas Leitner. Within- and between-host parameters regulate HIV-1 epidemiological outcomes.
31st International Dynamics & Evolution of Human Viruses Conference, June 19-22 2024.
- Narmada Sambaturu, Emily J. Fray, Fengting Wu, Carolin Zitzmann, Francesco R. Simonetti, Dan H. Barouch, Janet D. Siliciano, Robert F. Siliciano, Ruy M. Ribeiro, Alan S. Perelson, Carmen Molina-París, and Thomas Leitner. Longitudinal dynamics of SIV and HIV divergence during antiretroviral therapy is determined by the decay of short- and long-lived cells.
30th International Dynamics & Evolution of Human Viruses Conference, April 19-22 2023.
- Narmada Sambaturu, Sumanta Mukherjee, Martín López-García, Carmen Molina-París, Gautam I Menon, and Nagasuma Chandra. Role of genetic heterogeneity in determining the epidemiological severity of H1N1 influenza.
Epidemiology meets Immunology and Vice Versa - Linking Math Epidemiology to Math Immunology, SMB Math-Epidemiology/Math-Immunology Subgroups Mid-Year Mini Virtual Conference, February 27-28 2022.
- Narmada Sambaturu, Sumanta Mukherjee, Martín López-García, Carmen Molina-París, Gautam I Menon, and Nagasuma Chandra. Incorporating genetic heterogeneity into epidemic models for H1N1 influenza
Mathematical and Statistical Explorations in Disease Modelling and Public Health, International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bangalore, India, Jul 1 - 11 2019. [Slides, Video]
- Narmada Sambaturu, Madhulika Mishra, Rahul Metri and Nagasuma Chandra. An algorithm for identifying druggable targets among influential mutations in individual cancer patients
Indo-US conference on Sculpting the future of medicine - Gateway to the post-proteogenome era, at Advanced Centre For Treatment, Research And Education In Cancer (ACTREC), Mumbai, India, Dec 10 - 11 2018.
- Narmada Sambaturu and Nagasuma Chandra. OptiNeo - an algorithm to optimise the number of neo-antigenic peptides for cancer immunotherapy
Nature Big Data and Cancer Precision Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, Oct 1 - 2 2018.
- Narmada Sambaturu, Rahul Metri, Madhulika Mishra and Nagasuma Chandra. An unbiased algorithmic identification of 'influential' mutations in individual cancer patients
Nature Big Data and Cancer Precision Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, Oct 1 - 2 2018. Presented by Nagasuma Chandra
- Narmada Sambaturu, Sridhar Hannenhalli, and Nagasuma Chandra. Cutting through the complexity of genomic data: A general method to identify candidate genes
RECOMB/ISCB Conference on Regulatory and Systems Genomics with DREAM Challenges, New York, NY, Nov 19 - 21 2017. [Poster]
- Narmada Sambaturu, Sumanta Mukherjee, Martín López-García, Carmen Molina-París, Gautam I. Menon, and Nagasuma Chandra. Role of genetic heterogeneity in determining the epidemiological severity of H1N1 influenza.
Discussion meeting on Mathematical Models of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In association with the EPSRC-DST Indo-UK Initiative in Applied Mathematics and the EU-FP7 supported Indo-European Research Network in Mathematics for Health and Disease. April 2017.

Invited Talks

- Pathways to STEM, Evolution of Human Immunodeficiency Virus. STEM Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, Jul 2023.
- Careers in Computer Science, Modeling Disease Spread. STEM Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, Jun 2022.
- Data Science in Bioinformatics. Women in Data Science (WiDS) Mysuru, India, Sep 2020. [Video]
- Network Algorithms and their Applications in Biology. Sanjay Ghodawat University, Kolhapur, India, Dec 2018.
- Statistical Thinking in Biomedical Research. KLE College of Pharmacy, Bangalore, India, Apr 2018.

Teaching

- Instructor for course ISE314, Computer Programming for Engineers, Fall 2024, School of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA.
Topics: Fundamental concepts and applications of computer programming, software engineering, database management, computational problem solving, and statistical techniques for data mining.
- Guest Lecturer for the course Molecular Biology, Winter 2021, Pre-Medical Program leading to Doctor of Medicine (MD). International Medical School (St. George's University) Bangalore campus, Karnataka, India.
Topics: Molecular Biology Tools and Concepts of OMICS, Bioinformatics, Transgenic Plants, Transgenic Animals, Molecular Medicine, Gene Therapy.
- Teaching Assistant for the course Current Trends in Drug Discovery, Summer 2018, Indian Institute of Science, India
- Learning Enabler, Tata Consultancy Services, Common Initial Learning Program, 2010, Bidadi, Karnataka, India

Past

Before coming to Binghamton University, I worked as a Director's Postdoctoral Fellow the Los Alamos National Laboratory. I completed my PhD in Interdisciplinary Mathematical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and an MSc in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore. Prior to that, I was in the Technology Excellence Group at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). I did my Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering in the Visvesvaraya Technological University in Karnataka, India.

In the News

The work studying the Role of genetic heterogeneity in determining the epidemiological severity of H1N1 influenza was featured in an Indian national newspaper called The Hindu [link, pdf]. It was also featured on the IISc website [link, pdf], and on a science blog called Research Matters [link, pdf].