Koushambi Mitra obtained her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Presidency College, University of Calcutta (2006-2009). Mitra then joined as an integrated MS-PhD student at the Indian Institute of Science and developed platinum complexes as light activated DNA crosslinking and anticancer agents (2009-2016). Thereafter, Mitra did a series of brief postdoctoral stints (Virginia Commonwealth University, 2016-2018; and the University of Texas at Dallas, 2018-2020) where she switched her research interests to organic synthesis and chemical biology. She developed unique photocages for cancer drug delivery and activity-based sensors for detection of enzymatic activity in living neuronal cells. In her last postdoc at the University of Chicago (2020-2024), she developed ratiometric sensors for quantitative imaging of organellar sodium ions. Currently, Mitra is an assistant professor in the department of chemistry at IIT Jodhpur (July, 2024) where her research interests lie in the highly interdisciplinary areas of chemical biology.

We are developing cutting-edge chemical technologies to understand the biochemical and chemical environment of organelles. Our main approach is to enable the chemistry done in reaction vessels to occur in a much complex cellular milieu. Though substantial advances have been made to understand the cell as a whole entity, we still lack probes and methods to study biological processes specifically in organelles in living system as a function of time. To meet this dire need, we are designing and developing chemical platforms which will allow us to map and correlate organelles based on morphological and functional properties.

The ongoing projects of our research group are:

1. Developing organelle-targeted fluorescent probes for physiological ions and metabolites and study them in the context of health and diseases

2. Developing activity-based chemical probes for detecting enzyme activities of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and reductive pathways

3. Developing biorthogonal and bioconjugation reactions for specific tagging of metabolites or proteins in the organelles