Suresh Poudel was born in a rural region of Nepal’s Kaski District, where he spent his childhood and teens under difficult financial circumstances. Despite numerous deprivations, he persevered, making his way to college. While earning his undergraduate degree at Kathmandu University, Poudel received the Vice Chancellor Gold Medal and National Gold Medal for securing the highest cumulative grade-point average in the entire university and its affiliated colleges. He started his first job as a teacher in the Department of Biotechnology at Kathmandu University. His teaching experiences in courses such as Biochemistry and Enzymology laid a strong foundation for success in his future master’s and doctoral research.
After two years of teaching, Poudel received the prestigious QUOTA scholarship to pursue an MSc at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. After receiving his MSc, he returned to Kathmandu University to work as a lecturer in the Department of Biotechnology; two years later, he was accepted into the Genome Science and Technology program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. While pursuing his PhD, he worked in Robert L. Hettich’s lab at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). During his PhD, Poudel’s research was focused on describing microbial proteins using mass spectrometry techniques and computational tools in order to understand the metabolism within the microbe. While in his graduate program at UT, Suresh attained two first-author publications in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, along with multiple papers on which he was a co-author. He served as the president of the University of Tennessee Nepali Students Association (UTNSA) from 2016–2017 and is actively involved in advisory activities for the association.
Poudel started his professional career as a postdoctoral researcher in the Biosciences Division at ORNL, focused on establishing a platform for comprehensively studying metabolites in a system and understanding the potential functions for proteins of unknown functions from a bioinformatics perspective. Poudel, then moved as a bioinformatics postdoctoral researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA in the Department of Structural Biology and Department of Developmental Neurobiology. His major role is to develop Bioinformatics tools for metabolomics and to perform a comprehensive posttranslational modifications (PTMs) in Alzheimer’s disease and Cancer patients. Currently, Poudel has established himself as the Bioinformatics Research Scientist at the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics. He leads several computational proteomics projects mainly focusing on the development of algorithms and software novel in the field.
Besides being passionate about life sciences, he plays several sports including soccer, cricket, volleyball, tennis, and badminton. Throughout his academic career, he has kept a focus on his home country of Nepal, not only through his work with the University of Tennessee Nepali Student’s Association (UTNSA), but also by participating in Nepali cultural dances in Nepal, Norway and the USA. Suresh has been happily married for a decade and his wife, Pragya, works as the postdoctoral researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CkCxULAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
