Dr Ramesh Narayanan is a Lecturer in Biochemistry & Biotechnology at Swinburne University of Technology. He completed his PhD thesis on Motor Neurone Disease at the Queensland Brain Institute. Following this, he worked with CRC for People Living with Autism Spectrum Disorders to develop cell models for studying Autism. For his second postdoctoral fellowship, Dr Narayanan utilized Caenorhabditis elegans for studying nervous system function and disease. In 2018, Dr Narayanan was recruited to NSW Health to head the pre-clinical model development program for inherited neuropathies. His research involves developing new C. elegans models for studying neurodegeneration and studying ageing and metabolism in health and disease. Ramesh has successfully developed and published C elegans models for three rare or ultra-rare diseases (Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, distal hereditary motor neuropathy, and riboflavin transporter deficiency). In addition, he utilizes C. elegans for drug screening and for validating nanotechnological drug delivery systems. His work has been published in top-tier journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Brain, Nature communications and Human molecular genetics. 

Dr Narayanan is passionate about clinical translation of genomic data in the area of rare neurological and metabolic diseases. He closely works with Diagnostic pathologists, Clinicians and scientists from UNSW, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney Local Health District, NSW Health, Queensland Health and University of Queensland to help redefine the pathological status of Variants of Unknown Signficance (VUS). He also voluneteers with the US based ZMYND11 Trearment Foundation, a rare-disease parent led foundation assisting with developing educational content on genetics and genomics for parents of children suffering from rare diseases.