Debnath Ghosal MD, PhD

Dr. Debnath Ghosal is a Senior Lecturer and laboratory head in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the University of Melbourne at the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute. His research interest lies in the intricacies of host-pathogen interaction particularly, how bacterial and viral pathogens utilize complex molecular machines to cause infection.

Debnath obtained his Master's degree from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, India) and subsequently completed his Ph.D. dissertation from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (University of Cambridge, UK) under the supervision of Dr. Jan Löwe (FRS). After his Ph.D., Debnath worked briefly as a career development fellow at the MRC LMB before moving to the California Institute of Technology (USA) for his postdoctoral training with Prof Grant Jensen.

He has more than ten years of research experience in the areas of structural biology, biochemistry, and bacterial cell biology. Debnath joined the University of Melbourne in early 2020. His laboratory utilizes the unique power of cryo-ET and combines it with correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM), and Focused Ion Beam (FIB) milling to investigate the structure and function of large bacterial macromolecular assemblies and host-pathogen interaction.