THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Shaarika Sarasija was awarded a three-year CIHR post-doctoral fellowship (Canadian Institute of Health Research) for studying the role of G-protein coupled receptors in Alzheimer’s disease and why women are particularly vulnerable to the disease onslaught. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr Stephen S G Ferguson at the University of Ottawa.
Shaarika was selected as one of the seven high school students to represent India at the 2005 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest pre-college science conference, held at Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Here, she was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences in New York.
She was awarded PhD for her research on the non-amyloidogenic role of presenilin in Alzheimer’s disease etiology at Albany Medical College, New York. She is the granddaughter of senior journalist the late Puthur Narayanan Nair, and retired scientist R Gopinathan Nair, and daughter of N Krishnakumar (Kireedam Unni) film producer and Sarasija. S, retired superintending engineer, Kerala PWD.