Ajaya Kumar Sahoo wins the HBNI Outstanding Student Award 2025 in the Life Sciences
July 17, 2025 | Bharti Dharapuram
Ajaya Kumar Sahoo, who completed his PhD in Areejit Samal’s group at IMSc, recently won the Homi Bhabha National Institute Outstanding Student Award in the Life Sciences for his thesis titled ‘Computational data-driven investigation of chemical exposome and its links to human and ecosystem health.’ He spoke to Bharti Dharapuram about his research, learnings from his PhD, and future plans.
What are some of the main findings of your thesis?
My thesis falls in the area of computational toxicology and chemical exposome, which is the focus of our research group. Here, we look at different types of chemicals and their adverse effects on humans and the ecosystem. Of the more than hundred million chemicals that have been documented so far, only a few thousand have been experimentally tested for their toxicity. It is difficult to experimentally test all of them, as the chemical space is huge. But computational approaches can help us prioritise chemicals that can be tested in the lab. For my PhD, I used computational methods to look into the toxic effects of heavy metals, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, plastic additives and petroleum hydrocarbons.
In the first part of my thesis, we characterised activity cliffs — structurally similar chemicals that show a wide difference in their biological activity. We were interested in the toxicity of chemicals, and used several chemical datasets to identify activity cliffs, and structurally characterise and classify them. We specifically looked at the binding affinity of chemicals to endocrine receptors that can cause imbalances in the body’s hormonal system. This is useful in developing better training datasets for machine learning models, which can predict the toxicity of chemicals.
In the second part of my thesis, we used many publicly available databases to obtain a comprehensive view of toxicity induced by environmental chemicals. This work was done in collaboration with the National Centre for Coastal Research, Chennai. After chemical exposure, biological events at the molecular level can trigger cascading effects at the cellular, tissue, organism, and population levels. Using various databases, we mapped toxicological data onto biological events to understand adverse outcome pathways for the heavy metal cadmium, plastic additives, and petroleum hydrocarbons. For petroleum hydrocarbons, we also studied ecosystem effects and species sensitivity, and performed risk assessment for aquatic habitats in India.
How did you get interested in research? What are some of the learnings from your PhD?
I did my Integrated Master’s degree in physics from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, before I joined as a PhD student at IMSc. I was interested in doing interdisciplinary work; this was one such program that I came across, and I joined Areejit Samal’s group. It was challenging to find an area of work that interested me, that I could continue working on five to ten years down the line. My advisor encouraged me to consider the broader relevance of research questions and helped me pursue my interests. One of the reasons why I am interested in this area is its direct application. In the future, when India develops its policy for chemical regulation, this work will be very useful.
There were a lot of technical learnings during my PhD, such as working on the supercomputer and creating and managing several databases. It can be easy to get distracted, especially in a small place like IMSc, but I was always surrounded by my lab members who helped me stay focussed. Research is not easy and takes a substantial investment of time, which is important to consider before starting a PhD.
What are your future plans?
From this August, I will be starting a postdoctoral position in Jinhee Choi’s group at the University of Seoul. I will continue to work in the area of toxicology, looking at consumer products, and mixture toxicity, where computationally there isn’t much formalism. I will be integrating experimental data from the lab with computational methods during my postdoctoral research and I am very excited about it.
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