Rajini Haraksingh

Rajini Haraksingh is a human geneticist and university Lecturer with a passion for studying life at its most fundamental molecular levels. She has been an avid yoga practitioner for more than 20 years, and credits this practice for her ability to live life to its fullest and be successful in a wide range of endeavours. She routinely uses elements of yoga as a university lecturer to help students, colleagues, and herself manage the stresses of academia. In 2018, she formalised her yoga teacher training at Yoga Vidya Mandiram in Rishikesh, India. Her educational approach challenges learners to apply what they know in ingenious ways to solve seemingly intractable problems, in which there is often no single best solution. This relies on radical self-awareness. She believes this is the best way to guide students to novel new heights, whether developing a new drug, aligning their bodies into a new posture, or mastering their mentality. 

Rajini was born and raised in Trinidad & Tobago. She received two Bachelors’ degrees from MIT in Mathematics and Biology, a PhD in Human Genetics from Yale, postdoctoral training at Stanford in Genomics and Personalized Medicine, and holds a certificate in University Teaching and Learning from the University of the West Indies. She is also a classically-trained dancer, wife, and daughter. She has recently embarked on her most important genetics experiment to date; being a new mom to two young boys!