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Niteesh Kumar Pandey

Niteesh Kumar Pandey

postdoc

Fellowship: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

Biography

Post-Doctoral fellow at IIT-Roorkee & IWMI - Collaborative Project

Ph.D. In Biosciences and Bioengineering from IIT Roorkee (India), completed in 2024. Expertise in environmental microbiology, water quality, genome sequencing, and biophysical techniques. I was a SPARC Fellow at Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom (2019-20). I also have a specialization in antimicrobial resistance and environmental monitoring, with over 2+6 (postdoctoral + PhD-level) years of laboratory research experience. Authored 7+ peer-reviewed research articles and 3 book chapters, contributed to 3 patents, and generated more than 120 BioSample accession records (metagenomic and whole-genome sequence datasets) deposited in the NCBI portal.

Currently serving as a Post-Doctoral fellow in a collaborative project (IIT-Roorkee & IWMI) focusing on one-health and environmental sustainability. The aim of this initiative is to protect human health from zoonotic pathogens. My role is to develop a watershed monitoring and surveillance model to understand the emergence of drug resistance and to develop real-time AMR diagnostics.

Academic Background

Ph.D. (Bioscience and Bioengineering) Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, INDIA

M.Sc. (Biotechnology) Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, INDIA

AICET-JNU-CEEB (2013) AIR 777; JGEEBILS-TIFR 2017 (GS); GATE-BT (2016) AIR 993; GATE (2017) AIR 73

Selected Publications

Granted Patent

  1. Niteesh Kumar Pandey and Saugata Hazra, Colorimetric assay for testing the presence of antimicrobial resistance, 2021, Patent Number 435256. https://iprsearch.ipindia.gov.in/PublicSearch/PublicationSearch/Search

Filed patents

  1. Saugata Hazra, Devesh Bhimsaria, Subhecchha Baidya, Kunal Dhankhar and Niteesh Kumar Pandey, A system, method, and device for the detection of drug-resistant pathogens; BL-Tester Advance. Application no. 202411001056, Jan 2024.
  2. Saugata Hazra, Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Kunal Dhankhar, Subhecchha Baidya and Sonal Atreya, A method for detecting antimicrobial resistant bacteria from environmental samples. Application No. 202411040598, August 2023.

Publications

  1. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Simon Monika, Rajesh Kumar Vishwakarma, Sumit Sen, Himanshu Joshi, Shweta Yadav, Javier Mateo-Sagasta, Mahesh Jampani, Alok Sikka, and Saugata Hazra. "Exploring microbial diversity, antibiotic resistance, and their environmental drivers in urban and peri-urban riverbed sediments of sub-tropical river basins." Environmental research, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2025.123174
  2. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Manish Paul, Ayan Banerjee, Gireesh Kumar Shroti, Preeti Tomer, Rajesh Kumar Gazara, Hrudayanath Thatoi, Thallada Bhaskar, Saugata Hazra, and Debashish Ghosh. "An insight into omics analysis and metabolic pathway engineering of lignin-degrading enzymes for enhanced lignin valorization," Bioresource Technology, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2023.129045
  3. Niteesh Kumar Pandey and Saugata Hazra, “Complete genome sequence of carbapenem resistant pathogenic Klebsiella aerogenes strain CH7 isolated from vermicompost”, ASM Microbiology Resource Announcements, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1128/mra.01284-23
  4. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Alla Edhin Alkhatib, Saugata Hazra, “Draft genome sequence of biofilm-forming Pseudomonas aeruginosa HLHR and non-biofilm-producing Pseudomonas sp. HLMP isolated from vermicompost”, ASM Microbiology Resource Announcements, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1128/mra.00002-25
  5. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Alkhatib Alaa Eddin Alhmeidi, Simon Monika, Rajesh Kumar Vishwakarma, Jagdeesh Kumar, Srikanth V, Sumit Sen, Himanshu Joshi, Shweta Yadav, Javier Mateo-Sagasta, Mahesh Jampani, Alok Sikka, and Saugata Hazra. “How do urban discharges regulate the dynamics of river water quality and antibiotic resistance in subtropical river basins?” Environmental research, 2026 (Under Review).
  6. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Monika Dubey, Bhanu Prakash Vellanki, Saugata Hazra. “Investigating Vermicompost Through Multi-omics Approaches to Explore Determinants of Antibiotic Resistance” Total Environment Microbiology, 2026 (Submitted).
  7. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Alaa Eddin Alhmeidi Alkhatib, Chirag Saini, Simon Monika, Rajesh Kumar Vishwakarma, Jagdeesh Kumar, Mohammad Shakib, Sumit Sen, Himanshu Joshi, Shweta Yadav, Javier Mateo-Sagasta, Mahesh Jampani, Alok Sikka, and Saugata Hazra. “Integrative analysis of river water quality and microbiome structure to evaluate rejuvenation along an urban and peri-urban gradient” Journal of Cleaner Production, 2026 (Submitted)
  8. Abirlal Mukherjee, Jyoti Barman, Rajsekhar Adhikary, Kunal Dhankhar, Sourya Bhattacharya, Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Ayushi Singh, and Saugata Hazra. "IITRS: A Promiscuous Enzyme Synchronizing β-Lactamase with Esterase." Biochemistry 64, no. 23 2025. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biochem.5c00384
  9. Sourya Bhattacharya, Vivek Junghare, Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Debashish Ghosh, Hirak Patra, Saugata Hazra, "An insight into the complete biophysical and biochemical characterization of novel class A beta-lactamase (Bla1) from Bacillus anthracis", in International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, Elsevier, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2019.12.136
  10. Sourya Bhattacharya, Vivek Junghare, Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Subhecchha Baidya, Harsha Agarwal, Neeladrisingha Das, Ayan Banerjee, Debashish Ghosh, Partha Roy, Hirak K Patra, Saugata Hazra, "Variations in the SDN Loop of Class A Beta- Lactamases: A Study of the Molecular Mechanism of BlaC (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) to Alter the Stability and Catalytic Activity Towards Antibiotic Resistance of MBIs", in Frontiers in microbiology, Frontiers Media SA, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2021.710291

Book Chapters:

  1. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Kalpna Hiteshi, Reena Gupta, ‘Drug Deliver by Green Nanoparticles’ Green Polymer Composites Technology: Properties and ApplicationsTylor and Francis Group and CRC Press 2017
  2. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Alaa Eddin Alhmeidi Alkhatib, Saugata Hazra. “The Death of a River: Unseen Crises in Freshwater Ecosystems Yamuna River” (Proceeding) CRC Press 2025
  3. Mainsh Paul, Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Gireesh Shroti, Preeti Tomar, Hrudayanath Thatoi, Debalina Bhattacharya, Samdra Prasad Banik, Debashish Ghosh, Saugata Hazra, "Enzyme-Nanoparticle Corona: A Novel Approach, Their Plausible Applications and Challenges", in Springer, Singapore, Springer, 2021
  4. Swati Mohapatra, Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Saikat Dey, Diptarka Dasgupta, Parsenjit Mondal, Debashish Ghosh, Saugata Hazra, "Production of Biodegradable Polymers (PHAs) by Soil Microbes Utilizing Waste Materials as Carbon Source", in CRC Press, CRC Press, 2020

Posters & Conferences

  1. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Saugata Hazra; Serine protease and it’s inhibitors ACS on Campus IIT Roorkee, Indian Institute of Technology- Roorkee, India 2018
  2. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Rajib Deb, Saugata Hazra; Optimization towards AMR field data collection using culture free testing kit; 22nd ADNAT Convention AROHP-2019 Indian Institute of Technology- Roorkee, India2019
  3. Niteesh Kumar Pandey, Saugata Hazra; A low-cost diagnostic kit to detect Antimicrobial resistance without laboratory set-up, International Conference on Biotechnology for Resource Efficiency, Energy, Environment, Chemicals and Health, December; CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun and The Biotech Research Society, India at Dehradun 2021
  4. One day workshop On “Characterization of Nanoparticles using Zetasizer: Hands-on training” in IIT- Roorkee, November 2018.
  5. Virtual workshop on Elemental Analysis and Genomics, ICGEB-New Delhi, September 2021.
  6. 5-day workshop on GCxGC-TOF-MS at ICGEB-New Delhi, February 2020.