Articles

  • Genetic mutations arising under stress may be beneficial at the population level

    It turns out that mutations are not only inevitable but may be highly desirable and more likely to occur when an organism is under pressure as shown in an experiment involving a highly edited bacteria. While the focus was on these simple life forms, it is not hard to extrapolate to humans.

  • Clopidogrel, Stroke, and why genetics is important for Indians now

    Clopidogrel is an antiplatelet drug that helps to reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events such as stroke. In 2020 the state of Hawaii successfully sued the makers of clopidogrel for not disclosing that the drug may not be effective at providing anticoagulation against thrombotic events for some people, particularly those of East Asian…

  • Hypertension: Shining a light on a stealthy killer in India

    Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is diagnosed when a person’s blood pressure reading is found to be consistently above the normal range for humans, a value determined to be 130/80 mmHg1 by the American Heart Association (AHA). Yet this chronic disease affecting millions of people worldwide,

  • Genetic Insights On Obesity And Body Fat From Diverse Populations

    The Maasai people of East Africa, villagers from a small Cretan Mountain, and the Old Amish from Lancaster come from three very disparate and isolated groups far removed from each other. Yet they share a distinct commonality; a much higher tolerance for fat in their diet than the rest of the world!

  • Why Rare Diseases In India Matter To All Of Us

    Rare Diseases are, by definition, rare. They typically affect less than 1/2000th of the population. Many of them are genetic and caused by mutations in a single gene and over the last two decades, thousands of genes causing many of these disorders have been identified. Rare Diseases are quite different from the more familiar common…

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Dr. Jonathan Picker Chief Executive Office

Dr. Jonathan Picker is an affiliate faculty member and clinical geneticist at Boston's Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

With 25 years of experience in Pediatrics and Genetics, Dr. Picker specializes in the interface of clinical care and applied genetic and genomic research. Dr. Picker's research spans diagnostic tools in genetics to descriptive analysis of rare disorders to molecular neuroscience. He was the co-founder and Director of the first Pediatric Pharmacogenomic clinic in the USA; as well as Director of the Harvard Medical School Advanced Human Genetics Training Program Course.

Dr. Picker is the recipient of various prestigious awards, including the first Sidney R. Baer Jr. Prize for Mental health Research. He has authored numerous research papers involving informative cases, molecular biology, behavioral neuroscience, applied clinical genetic guidelines as well as invited reviews and chapters.

Dr. Picker holds a bachelor's degree of Medical Biology in Genetics, and an MBChB in Medicine from Aberdeen University, UK. He also holds an MS in Genetics and Biochemistry and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Newcastle University, UK.

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Kushagra SharmaPresident & Board Member

Kushagra Sharma is a seasoned business leader with a career spanning entrepreneurship as well as general management, Kushagra has deep expertise in developing and executing business plans in start-ups as well as large corporations. He is responsible for the revenue growth of the business, strategic planning, and partnerships at Anuva.

Before joining Anuva, he was responsible for the strategy and project execution in launching 4G digital services for Reliance Jio in India. Kushagra has previously served in leadership roles in companies like British Telecom, MTS Sistema Shyam, Grail Research and Evalueserve.

He holds a bachelor's degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and an MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau.

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Dr. Asmi ShahVice President of Data and Technology

Dr. Asmi Shah brings in her data science expertise in dealing with big data, managing and standardizing multidisciplinary large scale biological datasets in the field of drug discovery through genomics and phenomics. She is responsible for the research and development of end to end software products and workflows.

Before joining Anuva, she contributed to the research of drug discovery done with the use of high content/throughput screening on various zebrafish assays at University of Heidelberg in Germany and at Harvard Medical School, USA. She has also taken up various technical roles in product management and software R&D with different corporate industries such as Intel, Rambus and Inform Technologies in the USA and with data analytics startups in India.

Dr. Shah holds a bachelor’s degree from Saurashtra University, India, an MS from San Jose State University, USA and has pursued her PhD from University of Heidelberg, Germany under a Marie Curie fellowship.

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Naveen Tewari

Naveen Tewari is the Founder & CEO of the InMobi group of companies. He brings his immense expertise with successfully setting up and running tech-first companies to provide strategic and tactical guidance to Anuva.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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Abhishek Kumar Chairman & Executive Director

Abhishek Kumar brings in extensive experience of acquiring, merging, carving out and repositioning companies globally. He founded Joulon - a KKR company, and has led large scale distributed businesses globally.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and an MBA from Harvard Business School.