Diya Kanpariya

Guide students through experimental design, pipetting accuracy, and safe application for hydroquinone in a Drosophila melanogaster research project. Performed and assisted with key biotechnology techniques including PCR, Spectrophotometry, DNA barcoding, Buffer Preparation, and microscopy. Collaborated with Columbia University researchers to maintain laboratory standards and ensure safety compliance.

Junior Research Scientist at BioBus - Columbia University (2025-08 – Present)

• Guide students through experimental design, pipetting accuracy, and safe application for hydroquinone in a Drosophila melanogaster research project.
• Performed and assisted with key biotechnology techniques including PCR, Spectrophotometry, DNA barcoding, Buffer Preparation, and microscopy.
• Collaborated with Columbia University researchers to maintain laboratory standards and ensure safety compliance.
• Mentored students in data analysis and interpretation for experiments evaluating the effect of 2%,4%, and 6% hydroquinone on fruit fly generations.
• Led hands-on molecular biology workshops for high school students, teaching PCR, gel electrophoresis, and genetic engineering fundamentals.

Research Intern at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (2025-06 – Present)

• Conduct bioinformatics-based research on Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), focusing on comparative analyses of wet and dry AMD subtypes to identify genetic and transcriptomic risk factor.
• Collect and curate large-scale genomic and phenotypic data from the Biobank to investigate correlations between genetic risk scores, disease progression, and therapeutic response.
• Perform quality control, preprocessing, and normalization of multi-omics datasets (RNA-seq, genotype arrays) for downstream analyses.
• Utilize RStudio and computational pipelines to perform genetic association studies, survival analysis, and differential gene expression profiling.
• Collaborate with postdoctoral researchers to interpret molecular pathways involved in retinal degeneration and validate gene candidates for further wet-lab analysis.
• Document findings in compliance with research ethics, data privacy, and institutional biosafety guidelines, contributing to the lab's AMD biomarker discovery efforts.

Research Assistant at New York Institute of Technology (2024-01 – 2025-11)

• Synthesized and tested novel chemical compounds, leveraging advanced laboratory techniques to evaluate efficacy, potency, and specificity of inhibitors targeting pyruvate carboxylase, contributing to cancer therapeutic development.
• Designed and implemented experiments for 1,3-disubstituted imidazolidine-2,4,5-triones (IZTs), resulting in the identification of promising small-molecule inhibitors with potential applications in drug discovery.
• Applied computational and AI-driven tools for virtual screening, successfully identifying lead compounds through structure-based and ligand-based drug design, accelerating the drug development pipeline.
• Utilized R Studio and statistical methods to analyze molecular data, providing actionable insights into inhibitor performance and optimizing experimental outcomes in compliance with research protocols.

Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology with Chemistry Minor – New York Institute of Technology (2027-01)