Aparajita is a PhD student in the Aceto Lab. She is working on the role of hypoxia mediated pexophagy in cancer under the supervision of PD Dr. Werner Kovacs and co-supervision of Prof. Nicola Aceto. Before joining our lab she worked as a Research Assistant in the Gallbladder Cancer Cell Biology group at the Tata Translational Cancer Research Centre (TTCRC), Kolkata. At TTCRC, she focused on developing a 3D matrix model to understand how the tumor microenvironment regulates drug response in gallbladder cancer. Aparajita received her Master Degree in Microbiology from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata (affiliated to the University of Calcutta). She received her Bachelor Degree in Microbiology from Acharya Prafulla Chandra College, West Bengal State University. During her Master studies, she worked as an intern in the Cell Biophysics Lab at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata to understand the effect of cell membrane undulations on cell shape and adhesion on a geometrically constrained substratum. After completing her Master Degree, she joined the Division of Molecular Medicine, Bose Institute as a junior research fellow to study how tumor initiating stem-like cells determine drug response and invasiveness in mammospheres. Aparajita is also a mountain enthusiast, an avid gardener and loves to learn new languages.