Dr. Urmimala Basu is a scientist, scholar and passionate teacher specializing in high school and college STEM education. Dr. Basu holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and master’s degree in Biophysics and Molecular Biology from the University of Calcutta, India. She earned her Ph.D. at Rutgers University where she asked fundamental questions about mitochondrial transcription initiation which is a key step in mitochondrial gene regulation and critically related to energy metabolism. Her graduate work was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association and University and Louis Bevier Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the School of Graduate Studies, Rutgers University. Her dissertation was awarded the Stanley S. Bergen Medal of Excellence for the top dissertation across the biomedical sciences at Rutgers University. Dr. Basu completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Here, she pursued fundamental questions in gene regulation at the transcriptional level by mRNA capping enzymes. Her research was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association.
Dr. Basu has extensive experience spanning over a decade in teaching and mentoring. She has worked with a wide variety of students at the high school, undergraduate and graduate levels. She has taught at Harvard Medical School, Simmons University, University of Delaware and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her time as a mentor in the ‘1000 girls, 1000 futures’ program by the New York Academy of Sciences, she worked with the students on various issues related to academics, internships, and career choices. She has also mentored undergraduate students in the laboratory setting both at Rutgers University and Harvard Medical School on research projects related to her own work.
