With multidisciplinary PhD in biology and experience in community leadership, academic policy reform, social justice, science communication, and analytics, Mayank Chugh is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, US, where he is establishing a teaching & research program I call the 'ReForm Lab'. Prior to this, he was a Postdoc in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, and the President of Harvard Medical Postdoc Association (HMPA; organisation overseeing 5000+ postdocs). 

As a postdoc, he was leading research on how hydrostatic pressure and transepithelial water transport shape organs during development. Before this, he was an International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Biology and University of Tübingen, Germany, where he obtained his PhD in Biology, in particular, biophysics and cellular nanoscience. In his 10+ years of scientific research, he has acquired diverse skills and valuable experiences, such as grantsmanship, mentoring, and scientific writing and evaluations.

Mayank is committed to social justice by reforming structural policies and culture. As HMPA's President, Chair of a DEI Departmental Working Group, Member of the HMS Diversity Office and international non-profit ASAPbio for open science publishing, he has worked collaboratively with multiple stakeholders at the institutional and federal levels to reduce opaque and discriminatory structural policies to help retain early career researchers from marginalised backgrounds in academia. These efforts have resulted in policy recommendations and publications, such as the commentary 'Citizenship privilege harms science' that he recently co-authored (Nature 628, 499-501 (2024)). Mayank's ongoing social justice activism focuses on research and health equity in the Global South.