Naveen Sop

STATEMENT OF INTENT “Luxuries spoil a man!”I grew up listening to this golden line from my father. His mantra was that a boy should never look for luxury in any aspect of life and should experience everything the way it was meant to be. He taught me to overlook the pain involved in a process by treating it immaterial and pushing it to oblivion. He never bailed me out of any problem, be it in school with teachers or elsewhere and always asked me to squeeze my own way out. He used to wait till the brink and then if need be, would lend his helping hand. On many such occasions, I used to rage against him as I used to yearn for the tender care that my fellow classmates’ parents lend their children. He always made me learn and get things the tough way and this made me a strong person mentally as well as physically, although I never realized it then. The other important lesson I learnt from my childhood days is to excel in multiple domains. I represented the TAMIL NADU STATE CRICKET TEAM for 6 consecutive years and was the spearhead of the bowling attack. I also mastered in karate, which I began learning during my teen years and whose skills I’ve honed enough to obtain my BLACK BELT 2nd DAN in my first year of under graduation. I was also actively involved in INDIAN ARMY’s NATIONAL CADET CORPS(NCC) at my school and hold an ‘A’ certificate and a ‘CORPORAL’ Rank in the same. NCC made me much more disciplined, focussed and strong and gave me an experience of the ARMY life. Despite my extra-ciricular activities, I maintained an average of around 80% GPA throughout my schooling. I mastered the art of time-management when it came to balancing sports and academics. In my 10th GRADE, I was awarded the “ALLROUND STUDENT OF THE YEAR AWARD” from the school management for my consistent performance in both sports and academics. Once I began my undergraduation in B.TECH with Bioinformatics as the Major at SRM University, Chennai, my interest in the subject started developing. That’s when I had to take a call between academics and professional cricket as both were highly demanding. Even though it was a tough decision, after a thorough deliberation for few months, I went in favour of the former. The reason was that I was simply fascinated by 2 major areas – sequence analysis and drug designing. The idea of mining information from a mere sequence was simply fabulous and drug designing has its own charm. Also the virginity of the field motivated me to channelize all my energy in it. I was very eager to start working on some real time project in one of these areas. I approached Prof. Mukesh Doble at IITMadras (Indian Institute of Technology) who, after repeated persuasion agreed to guide me. I began my work on “In Silico two-compartment analysis of drug pharmacokinetics using QSPR for constants generation”. I developed QSPRs for the various rate constants in the model and simulated the concentration-time curves of various drugs using the predicted rate constants. I am very confident of getting it published as my model is novel and integrated. My abstract on “In Silico analysis of human

pharmacokinetics using a three-compartment model” has been selected for an International Conference, ICDDT-2010(INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DRUG DESIGN AND THERAPEUTICS) to be held in Dubai in FEB 1-4, 2010. My current research in on “In Vitro analysis of pharmacokinetics and interactions of antibiotics using a two-compartment model”. My work under Prof.Waheeta Hopper at SRM University on the topic, “Control of Efflux mechanism of drugs in bacteria” provided me a platform to apply the nuances of research that I learnt from my previous experience. I performed QSAR studies of various efflux inhibitors to identify the most contributing descriptors. My stint in these research projects has only further fuelled my interests for taking up research in BioInformatics. Pursuing an advanced degree from the Informatics Department at Carnegie Mellon University will provide me an excellent opportunity to develop my skills and significantly enhance my career possibilities. Having acquainted myself with the various initiatives of the Infomatics Department, it is my strong belief that at the Carnegie Mellon University, I will find the training, mentoring and inspiration to help me achieve my goals. I promise to give the best of my efforts to contribute and work towards developing science, thereby developing mankind.