Devaki Bhaya grew up in India and was an undergraduate at Presidency College, Calcutta. She got her PhD in Biochemistry from Cornell University before returning to India as a founding faculty at the Centre for Biotechnology JNU, Delhi. She is currently a Staff Member at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a Courtesy Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. Her research interests are in understanding how microbes respond and evolve in a
changing environment.