Gopalan Vivek

PhD Student

Department of Biochemistry & Bioinformatics Centre

10 Kent Ridge Cresent,

National University of Singapore

Singapore 119260

Phone (work) : 65-68744459              (home) 65-62708024

Email: vivek@bic.nus.edu.sg

URL: http://surya.bic.nus.edu.sg/vivek

EDUCATION

June 2001-present

Ph.D in Bioinformatics at National University of Singapore.

June 1993 – June 1997

Completed B.Tech (Industrial Biotechnology) at Anna University, Chennai, India with first class distinction.

CGPA – 8.5 / 10; 4th rank holder.

WORK EXPERIENCE

June 1997 - Dec 1998

Research Fellow in Vittal Mallya Scientific Research Foundation (United Breweries), Bangalore, India.

Dec 1998 – May 2001

Research Scientist-I in Vittal Mallya Scientific Research Foundation, Bangalore, India.  

·          Development of an adaptive neuro-fuzzy control system using MATLAB neural network, fuzzy logic and simulink toolboxes for automation of beer fermentation.

·          Development of thermo-tolerant strain from a high-alcohol and osmo-tolerant Yeast strain.

·          Estimation of experimental parameters for optimal extra neutral alcohol production using an alcohol tolerant, osmo-tolerant and flocculating yeast strain in industrial fermentors.

·          Scale up studies on solid substrate fermentation and down stream processing of Xylanase enzyme.

·          Process Design, scale up, cost estimation and installation of pilot plant and production unit (2000 kgs per month) for purified Hydroxycitric acid and its salt forms from Garcinia fruit rind.

·          Scale up studies on purification of Azadirachtin from Neem seeds.

SKILLS SUMMARY

Bioinformatics

·          Set-up and usage of stand-alone BLAST2 & Fasta3

·          EMBOSS, VectorNTI, HMMER2.2, PRATT

·          ClustalW & ClustalX, PHYLIP, Rasmol/Chime scripting

·          Sybyl, Insight, SPSS (statistics)

Computer Knowledge

Languages: C, Pascal, Javascript, JAVA and PERL

Packages  : Matlab, Simulink, MS Office, Apache web servers.

Databases : MySQL, MS-Access

Operating Systems : Unix( Linus, Irix, Solaris),  Windows 98/2000.

Biotechnology

Strong skills in protein purification, expression, enzyme assays, DNA and RNA isolation, hybridization techiques, molecular cloning, restriction analysis, shake-flask & benchscale fermentation and various microbiological techniques.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH

Publications
Gopalan Vivek, Tin Wee Tan and Shoba Ranganathan. XdomView: Protein Domain and Exon Position Visualization, 2002, Bioinformatics [In Press]

Posters
10th International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, Edmonton, Canada 2002

2nd NUS-Sydney International Bilateral Symposium on Molecular Biology, Singapore, 2002

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

·          Awarded merit scholarship for pursuing Master in Bioinformatics at National University of Singapore based on merit.

DETAILS OF M.Sc PROJECT

Title

:

Analyses of protein domains and genomic elements using bioinformatics approach.

Duration

:

June 2001 -

Aim

The primary aims of the project are

·       To analyze the correspondences of domain boundaries of the protein chains in the PDB to the intron positions of its homologous eukaryotic protein sequences available in GenBank.

·       To study the variations in the protein domain regions defined in different structural classification databases like CATH, SCOP, NCBI, DALI and 3DEE.

·       To study the evolutionary importance of intron positions, phases and intron drift/loss in eukaryotic protein homologues.

·       To develop a data visualization platform for better understanding of the features of all the databases used.

Current Status

A web-based graphical tool that maps and visualizes domain regions in the input PDB chain and intron positions/phases of its homologous proteins to the protein 3D structure has been developed. It involved extensive perl programming and MySQL database concepts.

Availability

The program is accessible on the World Wide Web at the following URL

http:// surya.bic.nus.edu.sg/xdom.

DETAILS OF B. TECH PROJECT

Title

:

Computational Framework for the Flux Balance Analysis

Duration

:

Jan 1997- May 1997 (6 months)

Development of a comprehensive framework for the catabolic and the biosynthetic pathways in E.coli containing almost 155 fluxes with 119 metabolites was generated for optimizing the growth using glucose and acetate as feed using linear optimization techniques. The project involved programming in MATLAB, large-scale matrix handling, graphical visualization of metabolic fluxes and linear optimization.

Kindly check the presentation at http://surya.bic.nus.edu.sg/vivek/mfa.ppt for more details.

PERSONAL DETAILS

Nationality

:

INDIA

Address

:

 

Permanent address

 

Temporary/Contact Address

15 C1/1 Kanagaraj Road,

Ponnappa Nadar Nagar

Nagercoil 629004

Tamil Nadu

India

Tele: 91-4652-260122

 

#20-145, Block 2

Normantan Park Apartments

Singapore –118999

 

 

Tele (off): 65-6874-4459

Tele (res): 65-6270-8024

 

 HOBBIES

Playing Cricket, football and Volleyball.

REFERENCES

Dr. Shoba Ranganathan

Associate Professor

Department of Biochemistry

National University of Singapore

URL: http://surya.bic.nus.edu.sg/shoba

Email: shoba@bic.nus.edu.sg

Dr. Tan Tin Wee

Associate Professor

Department of Biochemistry

National University of Singapore

URL: http://olympus.bic.nus.edu.sg/~tinwee/

Email: tinwee@bic.nus.edu.sg