Dr. Mautusi Mitra is currently working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of West Georgia. She obtained her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the Louisiana State University in 2003. She received her BS degree from Presidency College, Calcutta and MS degree in Botany from the University of Calcutta, India in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Before accepting the position at the University of West Georgia, she was working as a Postdoctoral Research scholar and as a Research Specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research was focused on identification of novel CO2 and light- regulated genes that are involved in photosynthesis in green algae, employing molecular biological tools. She has published several research papers in national and international peer-reviewed journals and presented her research at various national and international conferences and at some of these conferences, she was an invited speaker. She has a research patent from her postdoctoral research at UC, Berkeley on the “TLA1 gene and its encoding protein that plays a role in the chlorophyll antenna size regulation in green micro-algae”. This patent has applications in biotechnology and is currently being used by biotech companies.