Dr. Athira received her doctorate in Biotechnology from Mahatma Gandhi University, where she worked on marine sponges and their symbiotic microbe-derived products as anticancer agents. Soon after her Ph.D., she worked as Genomics Scientist at OmicsGen Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd. Her research interests include microbial symbiosis and microbial products, genomics, neuroscience, and cancer biology. Currently, she works as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Neuroscience. Her present study focuses on understanding the role of the gut microbiome in neuroinflammation.