On the surface, Rushali Agarwal is a Validation Analyst with experience in technical writing, computer system validation, and quality assurance in pharmaceutical industry who is currently working in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Being born and brought up in Lucknow, Rushali lives with her father, mother, younger sister and grandmother. She joined Zifo, a Scientific Informatics Service Company, in February 2022. Being a vivid learner and optimistic individual that she is, Rushali made sure to learn as much as she could in the past one year of her corporate life.
As a child, she was an introvert and used to talk with plants and animals. Always being curious about little things since her childhood, she used to pester her parents with every question on her mind. She started developing interest in sciences and technology. In high school, she excelled in Mathematics and Science classes which led her to pursue BTech in Bioengineering. Intrigued by scientific research and development across the globe, she enthusiastically learnt about emerging technologies used by scientists in laboratories.
She focused on core subjects like bioinformatics and molecular docking. Her semester projects were based on protein folding and their underlying mechanisms. Not only these projects helped her in academia, but also aided her communicational and interpersonal skills.
Rushali was pursuing her 4th semester when the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Studying or working from home was quite challenging during that period, however she enrolled herself in different online internships, along with her regular curriculum. Rushali worked as a research intern in Rawal Genomics Lab based in Delhi, where their study was concentrated on Vaccine development and drug repurposing for COVID-19. She also worked as a student intern from NIT Bhopal, where she learnt Drug designing based on riboswitches to inhibit the activity of HIV Virus. She also had the opportunity to learn new servers such as RibEx, DRD, AutoDock, OSRIS property explorer, iFoldRNA, Swiss ADME. Along with internships Rushali also enrolled herself in some online training courses.
Things took a turn when Rushali’s professor gave her the opportunity to write a research paper under his guidance. The main focus of the research study was to find some cure for the Corona virus. The entire project included three people. After brainstorming on the benefits and harm of different species, the team decided to go forward with Terminalia chebula plant for the research. A lot of background study took place and finally, the paper was completed within 6 months of hard work.
After several rounds of application in various journals, their paper was finally reviewed and accepted in ‘Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine’. Months of dedication and sheer hard work finally paid off. Rushali received few invitations to present her paper. One of them was for a Speaker invitation for the 2nd International Conference on Pharmacognosy and Natural Products- 2022 . The next one was from Italy for the Speaker for the upcoming Congress on “2nd international Conference on Cell Science & Molecular Biology”.
Another invitation was from Sapporo, Japan for the 9th Annual Conference of Analytix-2023. Due to other prior commitments, Rushali wasn’t able to make it up to those conferences somehow. Nonetheless, she is really glad to won the Asia’s Outstanding Researcher Award and is looking forward to attend the Asia’s Science Technology and Research Awards (ASTRA-2023).
Apart from academia, Rushali has been fond of dancing, travelling and exploring places. She has participated in several dance competitions during her school days. She also likes to play Badminton. As a learner, Rushali has never learnt to give up on consistency and honest hard work. She believes sincerity is her asset which keeps her going and is grateful for her family and her teachers for the support they have shown throughout.