Ishita Das PhD 2005 - 2011

Research Interests

Working on neuroinformatics of autism spectrum disorders using mouse models of ASD. I also have interest in developing bioinformatic tools, e.g., I developed a detailed lexicon of phenotypes tested in mouse models of human diseases, focusing on neuropsychiatric disorders,  but applicable to most field of using mice, complete with definitions of complex neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and behavioral terms and definitions. Tools like this hope to allow the usage of standard nomenclature so that comparisons of evolutionarily conserved phenotypes between different models or model organisms from different laboratories becomes logistically possible.

Ishita Das is a part of the Mindspec annotation team working on the Animal Model module of SFARI Gene. Her work focuses on updating and curating mouse model data and configuration of the lexicon (PhenoBase) of animal model endophenotypes. Ishita joined Mindspec in 2012 soon after completing her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University where she worked on neuroanatomy and behavior of mouse models of Down syndrome(DS), testing a sonic hedgehog pathway based treatment regime that improves learning and memory as well as cerebellar dysmorphology in a DS model. She holds a M.S. in Biological sciences from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and a B.Sc (H) from Delhi University