Gitali Devi, PhD
Senior Scientist, Verve Therapeutics
Former RTI Lab: Postdoctoral Fellow, Watts Lab
Training Period: 2019 - 2023
Prior Academic Degree Institution: Nanying Technical University, Singapore
Gitali started her research career after completing a master's degree in chemistry at Gauhati University in India. Before she was introduced to the nucleic acid therapeutics area, she gained research experience in organic methodology development at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India. During her PhD with Professor Krishna N Ganesh at the National Chemical Laboratory, India, she developed backbone-modified peptide nucleic acids for better recognition of complementary DNA/RNAs. Gitali then moved to Singapore and pursued her postdoctoral research at Nanyang Technological University, with a particular focus on synthesizing new drug modalities including PNA, G-quadruplex, and molecular conjugates to achieve better antisense and drug delivery properties. In the Watts Lab, Gitali developed single guide RNA modifications for effective Cas9-mediated DNA cleavage and additional chemical methods to make various antisense oligonucleotide architectures, which could potentially improve cellular uptake and induce gene regulation. She recently joined Verve Therapeutics as a Senior Scientist. Gitali enjoys watching movies and likes playing volleyball (though she did not have a chance to play for years) and aspires to learn singing and dancing with her daughter in the future.