Dr
Bishnu
Joshi
I am Bishnu Joshi, born and raised in Nepal, a country recognized as the land of the Himalayas. I have completed an undergraduate degree in Microbiology(BSc Microbiology) and a Masters degree in Biotechnology from Tribhuvan University Nepal. After completion of my Master's degree, I have worked as a Research Officer in Annapurna Neurological Institutes from 2012-1014. During this tenure, I have worked in the diagnosis of (Neuro)cysticercosis, caused by the zoonotic parasite Taenia solium, a leading cause of adult-onset seizures and related disabilities. Furthermore, I have also worked in the diagnosis of Tuberculosis using PCR-based techniques. In 2014, with the financial support of the Belgian Directorate for Development Co-operation (DGD), I have completed my advanced master's Degree in tropical animal health" (MSTAH) organized by the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Institute of Tropical Medicine of Antwerp (ITMA). My strong background in Microbiology led to the successful completion of a Ph.D. on “Bacterial Extracellular vesicles (EVs) and their cargo” from the UiT-The Arctic University of Norway. During my Ph.D., I have particularly work with two clinically important gram-positive pathogens (Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecium) under the supervision team of Prof. Mona Johannessen, Prof. Kristin Hegstad, and Dr. Fatemeh Askarian expertise in the field. I have obtained hands-on- experience/theoretical knowledge with various microscopic techniques (AFM, TEM, confocal), extraction of small RNAs associated with EVs, and analysis of “omics” datasets especially proteomics and transcriptomics. I am passionate about scientific writing and communication. Till date, I have published 18 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals with more than 10 as a first-author paper. My scientific publications have been cited >760 (google scholar citations with h-index of 8). I love communicating science via scientific networking and enjoy hiking in my free time.
I am dedicated to mitigating antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a ballooning crisis worldwide. By 2050, it is expected that more than 10 million people will die every year of AMR if left unchecked. The AMR would be further aggravated due to ongoing Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemics as it has been reported that 70% of patients with COVID-19 receive antibiotics in order to avoid secondary bacterial infections. Hence, there is a pressing need to integrate multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary fields as in “one health approach” to manage public health threats such as COVID-19 and prevent other zoonotic disease outbreaks. Hence to manage the AMR burden, I am interested to work in the interdisciplinary field involving drug discovery from natural products (Screening of medicinal plants of Higher Himalayas as a source of the anti-infective using ethnopharmacology/and or Ethnoveterinary knowledge), understanding host-microbe interactions for the development of anti-virulence strategies (characterization bacterial outer membrane vesicles (O)MVs for the therapeutic use). Development of Point of care diagnostic tools for neglected diseases such as neurocysticercosis.