Pathway to Independence - an interview with Swarnabh Bhattacharya (Zico).

Swarnabh Bhattacharya (Zico) is a Principal Investigator at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, India. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and later an Instructor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, USA. Swarnabh is interested in understanding the intricate processes that govern the maintenance and regeneration of epithelial stem cell populations in the intestine and cornea, using mice, organoids and primary human stem cell culture systems. He is part of the 2026 cohort of fellows of Development's Pathway to Independence programme, which aims to support postdocs in obtaining their first faculty positions. We met with Swarnabh via Teams to discuss his research spanning corneal and intestinal biology, as well as his future plans to understand the epigenetic and molecular programmes that regulate stem cell and daughter cell phenotypes in health and disease.