Dr. Baliga received a M.Sc. in Marine Biotechnology from Goa University, India and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has won two competitive awards from the Govt. of India: the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Fellowship and the Department of Biotechnology fellowship.
          Dr. Baliga plays a lead role in the systems analysis of Halobacterium sp. He is particularly interested in understanding at a systems level the processes associated with the adaptation of Halobacterium sp. to frequent changes in its environmental factors. He queries the system with respect to both genetic and environmental perturbations and explores the global measurements in the context of inferred protein-protein interactions and functional associations utilizing the network visualization tool Cytoscape.
          Dr. Baliga has applied this systems approach to unravel a regulatory and biochemical network in the Halobacterium sp. that coordinates the operation of two important energy transduction pathways –arginine fermentation and phototrophy –both operating in an anaerobic environment (Baliga et al., 2002).