Job Description

We are recruiting three PhD students for the 2026–27 Health Sciences intake at the Agrawal Lab, Centre for Molecular Neurosciences, KMC Manipal, MAHE.

The lab studies how social experience and environmental stress reshape brain function and behavior using Drosophila genetics, functional genomics, behavioral neuroscience, and open-source tool development. Current projects span:

-Cell-type specific molecular responses to social isolation
-Wearable sensors, spatial behavior, and anxiety biology
-Neuro-immune regulation of behavior under social stress

Our work combines neurogenetics, transcriptomics, quantitative behavior, and machine-vision approaches, including DANCE, our open-source behavioral analysis platform recently published in eLife.

I am especially interested in hearing from students who enjoy thinking carefully about experimental design, behavior, data, and biological mechanisms across scales. If that sounds like you, I would like to hear from you regardless of which project catches your eye.

National fellowship holders (CSIR-UGC NET, DBT-JRF, ICMR-JRF, DST-Inspire, JGEEBILS) may apply throughout the year with admissions 4 times/year. Others may be eligible for the MAHE TMA Pai Fellowship.
Details are in the attached flyer. Email me your CV, brief cover letter, and referee contacts.

Email: pavan.agrawal@manipal.edu