Rahul Raghavan joined Portland State’s biology department in September. He received a doctoral degree from the University of Montana in 2008, and then did his postdoctoral studies at Yale University.
New faculty: Rahul Raghavan
Rahul Raghavan joined Portland State’s biology department in September. He received a doctoral degree from the University of Montana in 2008, and then did his postdoctoral studies at Yale University.
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This spring, Raghavan will start teaching classes in microbiology, but for now he’s working to set up his lab.
Raghavan’s research focuses mainly on human pathogens like E. coli and salmonella. He described his work as the study of bacteria at a genome level, which he believes is the direction biology is headed.
In spring, he will be taking over the microbiology course from another teacher and plans to continue the course work already planned. Next year, his goal is to change and modernize the curriculum. He’ll be adding more microbial genomics to the course.
Much of biology today is heading in a more computational direction. Raghavan said he used to do almost all his work experimentally, but now spends up to 70 percent of his research time on the computer.
“There will always be a wet lab, because some things need to be done there,” Raghavan said. “But more and more things are moving to the computer, which is exciting because, here at PSU, most of the labs are traditional biology labs. So it will be nice to add a more computational lab.”
