Monika
Kajal
Dr. Monika Kajal did her Ph.D. in Plant Biotechnology under the supervision of Prof. Kashmir Singh at the Department of Biotechnology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. Her Ph.D. research work was on miRNA biogenesis and studied the role of miRNAs in secondary metabolite biosynthesis. She pondered the miRNA regulation of secondary metabolite biosynthesis in C. borivilianum and Saussurea lappa. This included the study of miRNA biogenesis, identification and characterization of miRNAs and their respective targets, and degradome analysis. This laid the foundation for unraveling the complex miRNA-mediated regulatory networks controlling development and other physiological processes in said plants. This was the first study related to miRNA in Liliaceae family plants available in the public domain.
She presented her research work in reputed national and international national conferences such as EMBO|EMBL Symposium: The Non-Coding Genome 2017, Heidelberg, Germany; and International Meet on Frontiers in Life Science at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India.
She has worked as Project Associate at the Department of Science and Technology, Centre for Policy Research, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. Under United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), sponsored project entitled "The Study of Technology Transfer Centers to Increase Commercialization of Innovations" she studied the technology transfer ecosystem of India and other five countries named USA, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, and South Korea. She has also done distance learning Innovation and Intellectual Property management courses from WIPO.