Ravi Balasubramanian

Graduate Student
rb9713[at]princeton.edu

Ravi was born in Connecticut and grew up in Philadelphia. He went to Yale where he earned a BS in Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology and BA in Comparative Literature, concentrating on Latin American Spanish fiction.  He spent a year in France as a Fulbright Scholar at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and the Institut Curie in Paris.

For as long as he can remember, Ravi has been fascinated by the living world and how biological systems emerge and function. In prior research, he investigated  cell-type specific alternative splicing in multicellular alga Volvox carteri at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri; collective behavior ("flocking") in Volvox barberi at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia;  the dynamics of active migration of E. coli in porous environments at Yale; and temperature-dependent genetic regulation of development in C. elegans at the Institut Curie in Paris.  He also spent a summer in Costa Rica engaged in sea turtle conservation.

In the Mesa Lab, Ravi is investigating how the immune system organizes its response to injuries.  He is studying how monocyte get recruited to injuries, and how their cellular behaviors shift as healing occurs.

Ravi is an avid dancer of tango, salsa, and bachata.  In his spare time, he plays the sitar and is working towards certification in sitar performance and theory from a conservatory in India.