Dharanish was born and grew up in Bangalore, a city in southern India known for its gardens and pleasant weather. He completed both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His major in both degrees was physics, but he pursued projects in a wide range of subjects including theoretical ecology and evolution, computational biophysics, experimental condensed matter physics, and molecular biology. His Master’s thesis focused on theoretical ecology and evolution.
Personal Interests
Dharanish loves being outside and enjoys sports like ultimate frisbee, cycling, hiking, and bouldering. When indoors, he enjoys playing video games and listening to and producing music.
Research Focus
Dharanish is broadly interested in understanding what happens when ecological and evolutionary processes interact in complex ways. He is particularly interested in how inter and intra-species interactions, stochasticity, and spatial structure affect the dynamics of eco-evolutionary systems.
Current Research
His doctoral research focuses on understanding learning in animals and the effects of developmental processes, social learning, and games on behavior. Learning is the process of gaining new information or strategies over an animal’s lifetime, and Dharanish investigates how these processes operate within an evolutionary context. He employs methods of dynamic programming and reinforcement learning to understand these phenomena and answer key questions about the optimization of behavioral strategies.
Research Interests
- Eco-evolutionary dynamics
- Animal learning and behavior
- Evolutionary game theory
- Inter and intra-species interactions
- Stochastic and spatial dynamics
- Developmental processes in evolution
- Social learning
- Dynamic programming and reinforcement learning
- Risky behavior evolution
Publications
Dharanish Rajendra, Chaitanya Gokhale (2025). “Optimising play for learning risky behaviour.” bioRxiv, 2025-07. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.15.664889
Tanveen Randhawa, Dharanish Rajendra, Swastik Patnaik, Vishwesha Guttal (2025). “Higher trait diversity in savanna tree species may reduce bistability in favour of woodlands.” Cambridge Prisms: Drylands, 2, e4. https://doi.org/10.1017/dry.2025.1
Jule Neumann, Dharanish Rajendra, Tobias S. Kaiser (2024). “The Free-Running Circasemilunar Period Is Determined by Counting Circadian Clock Cycles in the Marine Midge Clunio Marinus.” Journal of Biological Rhythms, 39(4):379-391. https://doi.org/10.1177/07487304241249516
Dharanish Rajendra, Jaydeep Mandal, Yashodhan Hatwalne, & Prabal K. Maiti (2023). “Packing and emergence of the ordering of rods in a spherical monolayer.” Soft Matter, 19(1), 137-146. https://doi.org/10.1039/D2SM00799A
Dharanish Rajendra, Nikhil Maroli, Narendra M. Dixit, and Prabal Kumar Maiti (2023). “Molecular Dynamics Simulations Show How Antibodies May Rescue HIV-1 Mutants Incapable of Infecting Host Cells.” Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/07391102.2023.2294835