Kalki Kukreja

Kalki Kukreja is IMBA's first APART-USA scholar, joining Nicolas Rivron's lab at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) in Vienna through the fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), which supports outstanding researchers leaving the United States to continue their careers in Austria.

As a postdoctoral fellow, Kukreja studies the earliest stages of human development, when a single fertilized cell begins giving rise not only to the embryo but also to supporting tissues such as the placenta and yolk sac. Her APART-USA-funded project investigates how early human cells choose their fate and how the timing and strength of developmental signals shape that process, combining stem-cell-based models of early embryos with single-cell analysis methods. Her goal is to understand how embryonic tissues form in correct proportion, and why errors in these early steps can lead to implantation failure and miscarriage.

Kukreja completed her bachelor's and master's degrees in biochemical engineering at IIT Delhi before moving to the US for her PhD in biology at Harvard University, where she studied how early cell types emerge during embryonic development using zebrafish embryos and single-cell approaches. At IMBA, she continues to explore how complex biological systems emerge from simple beginnings.