Good day, Vinay Bachu. I'm Arjun. I've had a look through your background and your professional record. I'm interested in hearing more about your work and how you see yourself fitting in here with our faculty. Ready to start?

I'm Doctor Vinay Bacho.

Was mainly interdisciplinary and also a translational 1. So initially we started my, I mean my PhD work.

To develop or diagnose heart attack before it occurs. That was the thesis of my PhD.

So in that we have worked with aptamers which are single stranded nucleotide molecules which are capable of.

Interacting specifically with target molecules like antibodies. So we have used that and also in my PhD I have used different areas of biology and non biology topics like microbiology, molecular biology.

And non biology, microfluidics, a bit of electronics, coding, programming and all these things. So I believe, you know, expertise or.

Uh, knowledge in these areas of biology?

Uh gives me a good uh.

Keeps me in a good position.

You know to join vit.

Thank you for sharing your background, Professor. Let's delve deeper into the topics central to this position. Can you briefly explain how your experience with aptamers and interdisciplinary knowledge—like microfluidics and electronics—contributes to the areas of regenerative medicine or organ-on-chip technologies?

So, uh.

In case of.

Organo organ on chip. So most of the times we work with small chips wherein we need to fabricate. So things like microfabrication and all these things comes in play. So knowledge of microfluidics is very important if we are designing channels or if we are designing some platforms on which we have to grow organs. So I believe. Microfluidics helps in this and when it comes to Optimus.

Organ on organ on chip, I mean once we grow organ and chip, it will help us you know to detect or if we want to use that OOC organ on chip to translational approach, I mean proceed further using that organ on chip to create some translational technology. Then we can use aptomers as recognition elements and create sensors and when it comes to. Regenerative Medicine Organ Optimus are not just used for biosensor application, they are.

Once we have.

Also used for therapeutic applications. So using aptamers for therapeutics is something which I look for in my research and theranostics is 1 field where I'm very much interested. So regenerative medicine, therapeutic medicines, these are the places where I would love to use aptamers and explore what kind of potential you know.

Alternatives we can give using aptamers.

Thank you, Professor. Your insights demonstrate a strong interdisciplinary understanding. Let’s touch upon teaching next—how do you approach designing laboratory sessions to help students grasp complex topics such as organ-on-chip systems or microfluidics effectively?

Currently I'm working in Indian Institute of Science Iisc Bangalore has an instructor. So here my main uh task or work is umm.

To handle the lab for masters MSC life sciences students. So I'm pretty much adept and I have a good sense as to what what is the basal levels of current day BSE MSC students or engineering students. So day in day out I interact with these students and I am also helping the coordinators to plan and develop the syllabus so.

Creating curriculum is something which I've been part of for the last two years and when it comes to creating, you know, explaining or making students understand complex subjects, that is something which I have already been involved in. So right now here in IAC Bangalore, I'm trying to teach MSC Life Sciences students bioinformatics. So where we are also trying to teach them programming for biologists so that they can use programming and create certain RNA. This pipeline for RNA and sequencing analysis and other things, and also teach them about simulations and also about docking studies and a lot of other bioinformatic applications. So these kind of gives a background as to what kind of experience I have when it comes to teaching students and coming to your point as what kind of explanation or how I try to explain complex concepts like organ and chip. Uh, or microfluidics to the students. So it's very important for us when, whenever it comes to laboratory based experiment that we keep a good balance of theory and practical. So a limited or basic amount of theory is very much important so that they understand what's actually going on. And then using the laboratory experiments, we try to explain them how these concepts work and also. A prior information as to what is the importance of these topics helps us.

To give a better understanding and better insight and also kind of create an interest in the student to learn these topics.

That’s excellent to hear, Professor. Your approach of balancing foundational theory with hands-on experience is an effective strategy. Given your current role and experience, how do you evaluate and assess student understanding, particularly in practical or research-focused topics like these?

Can you repeat the question?

So that's kind of a hard part. I mean, it's very important for us to understand if the students are understanding or not. That actually helps us, if we know where the students are standing, to dumb down the approach or to complicate the approach or also helps us to know to what extent or what depth we can teach them. So generally here in ISC, what I'm trying to do is I do interact with students. So the assignments which we give to the students here are very kind of creative.

Of course, Professor. How do you evaluate and assess whether students have truly understood practical or research-focused topics, such as organ-on-chip systems or microfluidics?

So instead of them using the normal assignments wherein they just.

To the stage and present their assignments. So when they present their assignments, that is where we can question them and try to understand to what depth they have understood what we are trying to do. So if we can understand, you know their understanding levels, then we can kind of for the future experiments or future portion of the classes, what we can do is we can. Change modify our classes accordingly and then go, you know, in a bit of easier or tougher approach or deeper approach.

Search in textbooks or Google or nowadays use AI to give answers. They'll have to do the problem solving. So once they do that, they don't just submit the assignments. So what we do is we ask them to come.

Depending on student-to-student basis. And also what I am trying to do is when these practicals are going on, so we divide them into smaller groups. So once you interact with each and every group, you better and you understand it in a better way that how that group, group of three or four individuals are understanding to that. So it's not just the assignment part where you know, one student is standing and presenting and we are trying to question them and understand. But at times what happens is people have, you know, issues.

When presenting the stage, fear and all those things. So when I'm interacting with them in small groups, that kind of gives me a better understanding. And also it kind of, you know, cements a good relationship between an instructor or a professor and the student. That makes it very composite, you know, comfortable for the student to interact with the faculty and also they'll learn more using these kind of approaches.

It’s evident that your methods are thorough, Professor—balancing creativity, direct interaction, and adaptability. Your use of group evaluation and presentations fosters both learning and engagement. Let’s now touch upon guiding research. How do you mentor students effectively when they are tackling independent research projects, particularly in emerging fields like microfluidics or therapeutics?

So the lab in which I did my PhD, my professor was of the opinion that we need to inculcate these qualities of teaching the juniors. So he made all the PhDs, the senior PhDs to work with the junior PhDs, the Mtechs, B Techs and guide them through their projects. So I already have experience of teaching. Five different B.Tech students and two M Tech students during my PhD and after that I have also.

One more thing is right now here in ISC, apart from my normal teaching role, I'm also interacting in a few collaborations. So here I'm also trying to work with different institutes. And they're also some of the PhD students under some other professors who are not yet into optimal field and want to, you know, explore aptamers. They're trying to, you know, communicate with them. And I'm helping their PhD students formulate their experiments.

Helped a lot of my younger PhDs.

And all. So experience wise, I'm pretty experienced in this and coming to how I do that. So it's very important to understand how the current scenario is in Indian research. And I have observed a few things. So usually when a PhD joins a lab, then he starts the literature review and he, you know, identifies a question and then we as API discuss with them and then formulate a.

That the PhD students are also very new to this. Not many new joining PhD students are very well versed in research. So it's important that what we can do is, I mean, at least what I have planned for my future when I, you know, take PhD students under me or some other students and make them do research. So we can have a well defined plan, prayer itself and then a problem statement. I mean, and then once a student joins, we can propose them.

PhD plan, work plan, and then we propose some thesis topic and then we start the work. So this usually takes a lot of time and it's very important that we understand.

Do more literature survey and identify more, you know, gaps in research pipelines and then we can frame, frame research objective and start our research. So coming to this is the formulation part and coming to the experiments part, I think it's very important for a π or a professor.

That and make them.

To be in the lab and at least in the initial stage for every PhD or every project student, we need to sit with them, teach them the GLPS, the good laboratory practices, and also teach them the nuances, which you only get by experience. So I believe at times it's very important that you experience the results, the procedures, the small tweaks of a research experiment on your own, but at times it's very important you feed off from the experience of your seniors.

Your professors, so it's very important for us to stay in the lab, teach them so that they don't have to learn all on their all by themselves. So that kind of saves their time also and increases their expertise level also.

So I have a good amount of collaborative works also and individual works as well. But one work which has always fascinated me, even though that is kind of one of the smaller part of my complete PhD works or lesser impact ones. But still I love that because the reason is we initially started with an aim to.

Your approach to mentoring demonstrates a deep understanding of the challenges faced by new researchers, as well as the importance of hands-on guidance and structured plans. It’s clear that you value supporting students through both foundational planning and active mentorship in the lab. Let’s now move on to your research experience—can you describe a specific publication or project that you believe had the most significant impact, and why?

Create an approach where we can create the 3D models of aptamers.

So the back end view of the back end view I had was or the final target, what I had was to create a 3D selects process, in silico selects process. So when I say in silico Celex process, the current Celex process has a lot of experimental time, a lot of experiments to be done, all wet lab ones. And after that we move into the dry lab simulation, then we'll have to. Order these aptamers. We have to get the aptamers sequences and.

This it's a kind of very time consuming process. So initially when we start, So what I thought was we can create a 3D model of aptum, a 3D PDB structure similar to X-ray or NMR structure. So what I did was in this publication I explored multiple applications and I couldn't find any, at least at that time, any 3D structure generation. Apps for aptamer. So I created an ensemble pipeline in Silico 1.

Using which we created 3D structures and later on once I began my work, I observed that there are multiple, you know, RNA structure generation apps, 3D structure. So I integrated all the at least 7 to 8 of different RNA structure generation applications. And also I did a comparative study wherein we were trying to understand which kind of 3D structure. Gives better results in which kind of RNA applications?

So we made a comparative study as well and also we gave a pipeline ensemble pipeline using which we can create the 3D structure. Even though this is kind of a minor publication which have but I believe this is.

You know something which triggered me. So using that right now what I'm doing is I'm in collaboration with Raju and the Center for Biotechnology. So what we are doing is we are we are using that knowledge now we are doing something called in silico selects. They're already in the final stages of developing an in silico select protocol. So we have already completed the in silico approach. We got around 25 to 30 different atoms which fit best with the protein of our interest.

And now the student there in RGCB Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology is they have procured the aptamer sequences which I have got from the Insilico ceilings. Now they are testing it in vet lab. So this kind of, you know, is kind of a next step in in silico select. So that initial publication of 3D generation, it's kind of helping me to create a new path, new channel for aptamer technologies and I hope that.

If we perfect the in silico selects approach, we can.

You know, increase the importance of Optimus in therapeutics and theranostic field.

That's highly impressive, Professor. Your work on developing an in silico SELEX pipeline not only addresses a critical gap in time-consuming wet lab procedures but also paves the way for transformative advancements in aptamer-based therapeutics and diagnostics. It’s evident that your vision combines deep technical insight with translational potential. Given this strong foundation in research, how do you see yourself promoting industry-academia collaboration in areas like regenerative medicine or diagnostics?

So it's very important, whatever research we are doing.

Gets translated for the well-being of society so that the easiest way is collaboration with industries. So during my PhD we already had several such opportunities. So there's one startup called LLP startup LLP called Bio Detect. So that was started by a few of my seniors. So when I had the.

Opportunity to work on this translational project which was not just of this LLP but also from the DBT Government of India. So I I had this experience wherein we are trying to create a malaria biosensor, Malaria detecting biosensor using Plasmodium falciparum.

Plasmodium falciparum, LDH and LDH as the biomarker lactate dehydrogenase.

So that is kind of the previous experience and even now I'm trying to you know, partner with a startup called Aptos AI on this work wherein we are trying to create the in silico selects pipeline. So this is not new to me partnering with the industry. So we all, I also had a previous opportunities with kind of a pretty well known company called Perfect Day. So wherein it was almost in the advanced stages, I mean the tie up.

With our lab and with the company where we were trying to help them create Optimus for detecting multiple pathogens using aptamers instead of antibodies. So.

I think I'm pretty well versed with the kind of nuances which it takes and what kind of, you know, pointers which a company looks for in the research and also how to interact and how to approach an industry. So these are something some of the things which you only learn by experience and I believe I, you know, it gives keeps me in a good stand that I have already had all this experiences.

Your breadth of experience in fostering industry collaborations and translating research into impactful solutions like biosensors and diagnostic tools is admirable, Professor. It’s clear that you understand both the academic rigor required and the practical demands of industry partnerships. Given this, how do you envision your contribution to departmental research and curriculum development, particularly in emerging fields such as microfluidics, regenerative medicine, and diagnostics?

So once I I mean if I'm selected and once I join BIT, I have several plans when it comes to curriculum development. So I'm not sure what exactly the current curriculum of BIT is. Once I join, I'll have it, I'll take a look at it and and see what are the courses offered currently.

So I have a few things in my mind for now.

One is practical bioinformatics. So I have seen a lot of, you know, institutes teaching bioinformatics to students, but a practical bioinformatics is something wherein we teach less of theory and make them do the experiments. So it's kind of hands-on workshop instead of a course, But I mean it is a course, but it works like a hands on workshop. So that is one thing which I'm pretty pretty much excited to teach students and I've already started.

On my own here in ISC Bangalore. So other than that, coming to microfluidics, these kind of subjects, it's very important we make the students understand these advanced areas which can, you know, help them once they get into the pH D So microfluidics where is something which I'm pretty much excited to teach. And when it comes to microfluidics, what I think is instead of just teaching the basic physics and other principles of microfluidics, what we can do is we can integrate.

It current researchers.

Into the microfluidic fluidic curriculum. So what that does is that kind of gives an insight for the students to understand what exactly is happening in not just microfluidics, in the biology, biotechnology aspect of microfluidics. That is something which I believe you know, an integration of research. So it's not just an academic course, it's an academic course which is embedded with research motive and research initiative. So that is something which I would love to, you know, get it.

Into the curriculum and coming to the research part once I joined VIT, I want to continue with this in silico part. In silico selects part.

So I want to perfect this technology something like an alpha fold. So we have an alpha fold for 3D protein structure. Similarly, I want to have our own application using which we can in a blink of an eye we get aptamers for any target biomolecule or even metal molecule or any other molecule. So that is one part of my research which I would like to continue in bit and I want to start a few.

Right now this is an initial model we have.

New avenues in vit I mean research Ave. So what I want to explore is using microfluidics to create lab on chip approaches. I have already had this experience where I have created lateral flow based ECLECL, lateral flow, electrochemoluminescence and lateral flow approach for detecting myocardial infarction. So that was kind of a proof of concept which is also published already. So I want to continue this this part as well wherein we want.

To create a lab on chip approach wherein instead of just detecting one or two biomarkers, we can have.

A library of biomarkers which can be targeted. So that is something which I would like to explore.

Thank you, Professor. Your plans for curriculum development and research at VIT are comprehensive and demonstrate a forward-thinking approach. Integrating practical bioinformatics and research-embedded courses like microfluidics is not only innovative but immensely beneficial for students preparing for advanced studies or industry placements. Additionally, your vision for expanding research in in silico SELEX and lab-on-chip approaches showcases your commitment to cutting-edge innovation. With this, I believe I’ve covered the major aspects of your experience and plans. Is there anything specific you’d like to add or discuss further?

At the current time, nothing much.

Understood, Professor. Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences. You’ve provided a lot of valuable information about your background, teaching philosophy, and research vision. Is there anything else you’d like to ask or confirm before we conclude?

Our scheduled time for the interview is now up. Before we conclude, do you have any questions related to the role or the company?

So I have nothing related to the VIT well order. It's a prominent and well, you know, known institute. But I have a few things. So I just want to know what kind of facilities are provided once we join VIT when it comes to research?

To curriculum or the teaching part, I am I'm pretty aware how it works, but I I'm just curious as to how you know what are the initiatives and what kind of facilities joining professor gets in vit to start their research as quickly as possible.

The information regarding VIT's specific initiatives or facilities available for professors to commence research isn't accessible to me directly. However, institutions of such caliber typically provide well-equipped laboratories, funding opportunities, and the flexibility to collaborate with industry and other researchers. It might also include access to grants and resources to develop both your research and curriculum. If you would like, I can make a note of this question so your point of contact at VIT can provide you with more precise and comprehensive information. Would that work for you?

Yes, it will work.

Noted, Professor. Your question regarding research facilities and initiatives will be best addressed by the specific department or your future administrative team at VIT. If that’s all, is it safe to say we can conclude the session?

Yeah, we can conclude the session.