Karthik Shekhar, PhD, is an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research group is also affiliated with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Optometry and Vision Sciences. He obtained his undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and conducted postdoctoral work at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Although he is formally trained as an engineer and physicist, Dr. Shekhar's research interests are in the neuroscience of the visual system, and he has contributed to both basic and translational aspects. His group uses single-cell genomic technologies to understand the molecular basis of neural diversity in the visual system, focusing on its developmental and evolutionary aspects.
Dr. Shekhar's research is distinguished by close collaborations with neurobiologists and clinicians. He is a recipient of the National Institutes of Health Pathway to Independence Award, and his research has been supported by the NIH, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Glaucoma Research Foundation. He has been recognized as a 2023 McKnight Scholar and a 2022 Hellman Fellow and has been elected to the Allen Brain Institute Next Generation Leaders Council.