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+---
+title: Kush Desai
+image: 
+  path: /assets/images/saf.png 
+  thumbnail: /assets/images/kd.jpg
+---
+
+**MRes researcher**, MRes researcher at Imperial College London, Systems and Synthetic Biology
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+<br>
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+***
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+<br>
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+<img src ="/assets/images/kd.jpg" width="444" heigth="444">
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+<br>
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+***
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+<br>
+
+
+*Biography*
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+Kush is PhD researcher in the MPL, as part of the [EPSRC CDT in BioDesign Engineering](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/synthetic-biology/cdt-biodesign-engineering/){:target="_blank"}, co-supervised with [Professor Geoff Baldwin](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.baldwin){:target="_blank"} and [Professor Karen Polizzi](https://sites.google.com/site/polizzilab/home){:target="_blank"}. He is exploring communication in the gut microbiota between hosts and commensals. He is interested in the development of minimal systems to understand microbiome complexity. Towards this he is developing a printed model of Bacteroides spp interactions as well as genetically encoded evolved biosensors for small molecules. Kush also spent a year of his PhD at Harvard Medical School with [Professor Marco Jost](https://www.jostlab.org/){:target="_blank"} looking at aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) signalling and Bacteroides genetic engineering.
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+In his free time Kush is an avid Arsenal fan whose mood on Monday is often influenced by their success / failure at the weekend. He enjoys coding and has been known to spend 10 hours automating a task that takes 10 minutes to do manually. Kush requires 4 coffees per day to survive but believes this habit is unrelated to his insomnia.
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