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Hire Dr. Kayzad N.

India

USD 150 /hr

Genomics Expert & Microbiologist | WGS, TB, AMR | VP Research | 20+ yrs | PhD

Profile Summary

Dr. Kayzad Soli Nilgiriwala is a microbiologist and genomics expert with 20+ years of experience in microbiology, molecular biology, synthetic biology, and infectious disease genomics. Ph.D. from BARC Mumbai; Postdoc at MIT USA. Currently VP at The Avestagenome Project International Pvt. Ltd., leading genomics for rare disorders and neurological diseases. Key projects: WGS of 7,000+ TB isolates (CRyPTIC), Nanopore sequencing of M.tb from sputum (Longitude Discovery Award 2018), SARS-CoV-2 genomics, wastewater surveillance, AI-based AMR project (INR 218 lakhs). 27+ publications in Nature Communications, Lancet Microbe, PLoS Biology, J Clin Microbiology. Expert in WGS, NGS, bioinformatics, grant writing, and scientific consulting.

Subject Matter Expertise

• ☆ Molecular Biology
• ☆ Omics
• ☆ Genomics
• ☆ Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)
• ☆ Bioinformatics
• ☆ Gene & Protein Expression Analysis
• ☆ Structural Bioinformatics
• ☆ Infectious Disease
• ☆ Antibiotic Resistance Research
• ☆ Pulmonology/Respiratory Disease
• ☆ Tuberculosis

Services

• Writing
• Research
• Consulting
• Data & AI

Writing Clinical Trial Documentation, Medical Writing, Non-Medical Regulatory Writing, Technical Writing

Research Meta-Research, Feasibility Study, Scientific and Technical Research

Consulting Business Strategy Consulting, Go-to-Market Strategy Consulting, Digital Strategy Consulting, Healthcare Consulting, Legal Consulting, Scientific and Technical Consulting

Data & AI Statistical Analysis, Data Visualization, Big Data Analytics

Work Experience

Assistant Director

Foundation for Medical Research

2014 - 2024

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2010 - 2013

Education

Ph.D. (Molecular Biology Division)

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

2003 - 2009

Certifications

• Longitude Discovery Award

  Longitude Prize / Nesta

  May 2018 - Present

Publications

JOURNAL ARTICLE

The CRyPTIC Consortium, Ivan Barilar, Simone Battaglia, Emanuele Borroni, Angela Pires Brandao, Alice Brankin, Andrea Maurizio Cabibbe, Joshua Carter, Darren Chetty, Daniela Maria Cirillo, et al. (2024). Quantitative measurement of antibiotic resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis reveals genetic determinants of resistance and susceptibility in a target gene approach . Nature Communications.

Sonnenkalb L, Carter JJ, Spitaleri A, Iqbal Z, Hunt M, Malone KM, Utpatel C, Cirillo DM, Rodrigues C, Nilgiriwala KS, et al. (2023). Bedaquiline and clofazimine resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis: an in-vitro and in-silico data analysis . The Lancet. Microbe.

Nilgiriwala K, Rabodoarivelo MS, Hall MB, Patel G, Mandal A, Mishra S, Andrianomanana FR, Dingle K, Rodger G, George S, et al. (2023). Genomic Sequencing from Sputum for Tuberculosis Disease Diagnosis, Lineage Determination, and Drug Susceptibility Prediction . Journal of clinical microbiology.

Kayzad Nilgiriwala, Kalpana Sriraman, Ambreen Shaikh, Smriti Vaswani, Tejal Mestry, Grishma Patel, Shalini Sakthivel, Vikas Oswal, Pratibha Kadam, Daksha Shah, et al. (2023). Impact of COVID‐19 vaccination on transmission risk of breakthrough infections: Lessons from adapted N95 mask sampling for emerging variants and interventions . Journal of Medical Virology.

Kayzad Nilgiriwala, Pratibha Kadam, Grishma Patel, Ambreen Shaikh, Tejal Mestry, Smriti Vaswani, Shalini Sakthivel, Aruna Poojary, Bhavesh Gandhi, Seema Rohra, et al.(2022). Genomics of postvaccination SARS‐CoV‐2 infections during the Delta dominated second wave of COVID‐19 pandemic, from Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), India . Journal of Medical Virology. 94. (9). p. 4206--4215. Wiley

Dreyer V, Mandal A, Dev P, Merker M, Barilar I, Utpatel C, Nilgiriwala K, Rodrigues C, Crook DW, CRyPTIC Consortium, et al. (2022). High fluoroquinolone resistance proportions among multidrug-resistant tuberculosis driven by dominant L2 Mycobacterium tuberculosis clones in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region . Genome medicine.

The CRyPTIC Consortium (2022). A data compendium associating the genomes of 12,289 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates with quantitative resistance phenotypes to 13 antibiotics . PLoS biology.

The CRyPTIC Consortium (2022). Genome-wide association studies of global Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistance to 13 antimicrobials in 10,228 genomes identify new resistance mechanisms . PLoS biology.

Fowler PW, Wright C, Spiers H, Zhu T, Baeten EML, Hoosdally SW, Gibertoni Cruz AL, Roohi A, Kouchaki S, Walker TM, et al. (2022). A crowd of BashTheBug volunteers reproducibly and accurately measure the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 13 antitubercular drugs from photographs of 96-well broth microdilution plates . eLife.

Walker TM, Miotto P, K&#246;ser CU, Fowler PW, Knaggs J, Iqbal Z, Hunt M, Chindelevitch L, Farhat M, Cirillo DM, et al. (2022). The 2021 WHO catalogue of <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> complex mutations associated with drug resistance: A genotypic analysis . The Lancet. Microbe.

Nilgiriwala K, Mandal A, Patel G, Mestry T, Vaswani S, Shaikh A, Sriraman K, Parikh S, Udupa S, Chatterjee N, et al. (2021). Genome Sequences of Five SARS-CoV-2 Variants from Mumbai, India, Obtained by Nanopore Sequencing . Microbiology resource announcements.

Wilson DJ, CRyPTIC Consortium (2020). GenomegaMap: Within-Species Genome-Wide dN/dS Estimation from over 10,000 Genomes . Molecular biology and evolution.

Yang Y, Walker TM, Walker AS, Wilson DJ, Peto TEA, Crook DW, Shamout F, CRyPTIC Consortium, Zhu T, Clifton DA (2019). DeepAMR for predicting co-occurrent resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Bioinformatics (Oxford, England).

Rancoita PMV, Cugnata F, Gibertoni Cruz AL, Borroni E, Hoosdally SJ, Walker TM, Grazian C, Davies TJ, Peto TEA, Crook DW, et al. (2018). Validating a 14-Drug Microtiter Plate Containing Bedaquiline and Delamanid for Large-Scale Research Susceptibility Testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy.

Dhawde, R., Macaden, R., Saranath, D., Nilgiriwala, K., Ghadge, A., Birdi, T.(2018). Antibiotic resistance characterization of environmental E. Coli isolated from river Mula-Mutha, Pune District, India . International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 15. (6).

Sriraman, K., Nilgiriwala, K., Saranath, D., Chatterjee, A., Mistry, N.(2018). Deregulation of Genes Associated with Alternate Drug Resistance Mechanisms in Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Current Microbiology. 75. (4). p. 394-400.

Votintseva, A.A., Bradley, P., Pankhurst, L., Del Ojo Elias, C., Loose, M., Nilgiriwala, K., Chatterjee, A., Smith, E.G., Sanderson, N., Walker, T.M., et al.(2017). Same-day diagnostic and surveillance data for tuberculosis via whole-genome sequencing of direct respiratory samples . Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 55. (5). p. 1285-1298.

Chatterjee, A., Nilgiriwala, K., Saranath, D., Rodrigues, C., Mistry, N.(2017). Whole genome sequencing of clinical strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from Mumbai, India: A potential tool for determining drug-resistance and strain lineage . Tuberculosis. 107. p. 63-72.

Nilgiriwala, K.S., Jim&#233;nez, J., Rivera, P.M., Del Vecchio, D.(2015). Synthetic Tunable Amplifying Buffer Circuit in E. coli . ACS Synthetic Biology. 4. (5). p. 577-584.

Jayanthi, S., Nilgiriwala, K.S., Del Vecchio, D.(2013). Retroactivity controls the temporal dynamics of gene transcription . ACS Synthetic Biology. 2. (8). p. 431-441.

Bihani, S.C., Das, A., Nilgiriwala, K.S., Prashar, V., Pirocchi, M., Apte, S.K., Ferrer, J.-L., Hosur, M.V.(2011). X-ray structure reveals a new class and provides insight into evolution of alkaline phosphatases . PLoS ONE. 6. (7).

Nilgiriwala, K.S., Bihani, S.C., Das, A., Prashar, V., Kumar, M., Ferrer, J.-L., Apte, S.K., Hosur, M.V.(2009). Crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic analysis of PhoK, an extracellular alkaline phosphatase from Sphingomonas sp. BSAR-1 . Acta Crystallographica Section F: Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications. 65. (9). p. 917-919.

Nilgiriwala, K.S., Alahari, A., Rao, A.S., Apte, S.K.(2008). Cloning and overexpression of alkaline phosphatase PhoK from Sphingomonas sp. strain BSAR-1 for bioprecipitation of uranium from alkaline solutions . Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 74. (17). p. 5516-5523.

PREPRINT

Kayzad Nilgiriwala, Kalpana Sriraman, Ambreen Shaikh, Smriti Vaswani, Tejal Mestry, Grishma Patel, Shalini Sakthivel, Vikas Oswal, Pratibha Kadam, Daksha Shah, et al.(2022). Impact of Delta and Vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk: Lessons for Emerging Breakthrough infections . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Kayzad Nilgiriwala, Pratibha Kadam, Grishma Patel, Ambreen Shaikh, Tejal Mestry, Smriti Vaswani, Shalini Sakthivel, Aruna Poojary, Bhavesh Gandhi, Seema Rohra, et al.(2022). Genomics of Post-Vaccination SARS-CoV-2 Infections During the Delta Dominated Second Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic, from Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), India . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

OTHER

Kayzad Nilgiriwala, Vidushi Chitalia, Sanchi Shah, Akshata Papewar(2019). Genomic Polymorphisms in Toxin-Antitoxin Systems and Identification of Novel Phylo-SNPs and Polymorphisms Associated with Drug Resistance/Susceptibility in Clinical Isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from Mumbai, India . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

REVIEW

Karuna Sagili, Muniyandi M, Nilgiriwala KS, Shringarpure KS, Srinath Satyanarayana, Richard Kirubakaran, Chadha SS, Tharyan P (2018). Cost-effectiveness of GeneXpert and LED-FM for diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis: A systematic review . PloS one.

Nilgiriwala KS (2018). Basis of science policies for infectious disease challenges in India . Indian journal of public health.