Akila Muthalagu joins HOBEL as a visiting PhD student

Akila Muthalagu joined HOBEL in September 2020 as a visiting doctoral student after receiving the Swiss Excellence Scholarship for Research. She is a second-year doctoral student from IIT, India. She has a Master's degree in Biotechnology from the University of Madras and her bachelor's (Plant Biotechnology) is also from the same University. During her Master course, she focused on the Assessment and prevalence of Methicillin resistance staphylococcus aureus infection to the younger and elder community. Her work was mostly based on microbiology and molecular biological experiments. During her first two years of the doctoral program, she focused on indoor air quality in terms of microbial burden and its impact on human health.

By joining HOBEL as a visiting Ph.D. student, Akila was also selected as one of the final fellows on the Swiss Excellence Program 2020, funded by the Swiss federal scholarship council. As a Ph.D. student in HOBEL, she currently focuses on the research of indoor air quality in an office environment and occupants' contribution to the indoor microbial burden. With her previous research experiences and interests, she actively works on IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality) research fields.