Bhaskar Kumawat

Education

University of Michigan (2021-Present)
PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Indian Institute of Science (2016-2021)
BS + MS (Research)

Awards & Honors

Academic

2019 Best Poster Award, iSEB 2019 annual conference, JNCASR, Bangalore
2018 Gold Medal and Best Software Tool Nomination (Team Leader), iGEM 2018, Boston, MA
2017 Gold Medal and Best Hardware Nomination, iGEM 2017, Boston, MA

Fellowships/Funding

2017 iBEC Grant Indian Biological Engineering Competition. Awarded ∼14,000$ by the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India for iGEM 2017.
2014 KVPY Fellowship National level competitive scholarship with stipend upto pre-PhD level by DST, Govt. of India (<1% selection rate)
2012 NTSE Scholarship National level competitive scholarship by NCERT, Govt. of India (<0.1% selection rate)

Publications & Conferences

Publications

2021 Kumawat, B. and Zaman, L., 2021, July. Architecture of the Genotype-Phenotype Map and the Coevolution of Complexity. In ALIFE 2021: The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00386
2021 Kumawat, B., Bhat, R. An interplay of resource availability, population size and mutation rate potentiates the evolution of metabolic signaling. BMC Ecol Evo 21, 52 (2021). doi.org/10.1186/s12862-021-01782-0

Book chapters

2019 D’Costa, J., Pujar, A., Kumawat, B., Venkatesh, P., Ranjith, G., Sinha, V., Dubey, A.K., Narayan, H. Resistance: Tales from a Post-Antibiotic World. IISc Press, 2019. ISBN-10:8192570789.

Conferences

2021 Alife 2021, Prague (switched to online mode due to COVID-19) organised by the International Society for Artificial Life. Presented work on the paper "Architecture of the Genotype-Phenotype Map and the Coevolution of Complexity"
2020 ALife 2020, Montreal (switched to online mode due to COVID-19) organised by the International Society for Artificial Life. Received scholarship to attend the meeting as a new member to the community.
2019 Indo-Swiss Meeting on Evolutionary Biology, CHG, Bangalore. Poster on “Relatively disparate evolutionary dynamics of genomic and developmental features in unicellular and multicellular contexts”
2019 Indo-Swiss Meeting on Evolutionary Biology, CHG, Bangalore (Jointly with Preetham Venkatesh). Poster on “Utility functions with compounding returns lead to evolution of cooperativity in Multi-Armed Bandit networks”
2019 Indian Society of Evolutionary Biologists (ISEB) Annual Conference, JNCASR, Bangalore. Poster on “Investigating the evolution of developmental mechanisms in digital multicellular organisms”
2019 PhageShift talk at the Center For BioSystems Science And Engineering symposium, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
2018 PhageShift talk (and poster) at the International Genetic Engineering Machine Competition (iGEM) Giant Jamboree, Boston, MA. Winner of a Gold Medal and Best Software Tool Nomination.

Coursework

Graduate Level

Biology Molecular Basis of Ageing and Regeneration, Elements of Structural Biology, Molecular Systems Biology, Principles of Genetic Engineering, Bioinformatics, Spatial and Stochastic Dynamics in Biology, Quantitative Ecology
Physics Condensed Matter Physics - I, Statistical Mechanics, Computational Physics
Other Game Theory, Numerical Solutions of Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems Theory

Undergraduate

Biology Molecular Biology, Developmental Biology, Physiology, Biochemistry
Physics Intermediate Thermal Physics and Physics of Materials, Materials Thermodynamics
Other Algorithms and Programming, Intro. to Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Probability and Statistics

Technical Skills

Programming C, C++, Python, Rust, MATLAB, Mathematica, Bash
Design Inkscape, GIMP, R & ggplot, basic OpenSCAD, Digital Electronics
Lab Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Bacteriophage work, Basic Biochemistry, and Design of synthetic gene circuits (Model Systems: Escherichia coli, T4 Bacteriophage, Dictyostelium discoideum)

Teaching

BIO 173 Introduction to Biology Lab (Undergraduate); GSI, University of Michigan; Fall 2021
CMPLXSYS 391 Modeling Political Processes (Undergraduate); GSI, University of Michigan; Winter 2022
EEB 485 Population and Community Ecology (Graduate); GSI, University of Michigan; Fall 2022
bhaskar kumawat
kumawatb [at] umich.edu