Anbarasu (Anbu) Karthikaichamy was a postdoctoral research associate for the RIPE project in Steven Burgess' lab at the University of Illinois. His research focused on studying photosynthesis in the smallest microalgae and also building molecular tools to make them better. For RIPE, Anbu helped develop molecular tools that would enable his team to use Ostreococcus tauri as a model organism to study photosynthesis, and leveraging that knowledge to higher plants to improve photoprotection and photosynthesis. Anbu earned his bachelor's degree in biotechnology from Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi, India. He later went on to earn his master's degree in biopharmaceutical technology from the Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University, Chennai, India. Anbu then went on to receive his doctorate in microalgal stress response from the IITB-Monash Research Academy and then completed his postdoc in developing molecular tools for marine protists at SoMAS, Stony Brook University in New York. 

Anbu's work has been published in Bioresource Technology, Applied Phycology, and Omics: a Journal of Integrative Biology. Anbu was awarded the SoMAS Dean's Seed Grant (USD 30,000) to understand the molecular composition of a unique organelle in Aurantiochytrium limacinum (January 2021), a gold medal for M.Tech Biopharmaceutical Technology from Anna University, Chennai, India (2014), and was also awarded a lectureship by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India (June 2012). He also served as the design manager for ResCon, IIT Bombay (2015) and was the publication database TA at the IITB-Monash Research Academy (2016 and 2018). Some of Anbu's personal interests and hobbies include being a semi-professional photographer, painting watercolors, and loves dogs.

Anbu has gone on to work as a Research Scientist at Provectus Algae, Noosaville, QLD, Australia. His primary responsibility will be to characterize genetic parts in microalgae and design a pipeline for heterologous protein expression in microalgae for commercial use.