Tamal is a behavioural biologist by training and is interested in understanding the evolutionary consequences of novel selection pressures imparted by human-induced perturbations. He obtained a PhD in Behavioural Ecology from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, India. In his dissertation, he extensively investigated how native and rearing environments (both physical and social) determined behavioural types and cognitive abilities in zebrafish. As a postdoctoral research associate in Arizona State University in the United States, he studied how native and rearing environments led to the development of colour biases that may impact cognitive flexibility. He then shifted focus towards investigating the evolutionary implications of human-induced environmental change. He received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation (Germany) to study the behavioural and evolutionary implications of size-selective mortality using experimentally harvested populations of zebrafish in Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) Berlin.
Tamal joined the SCIoI cluster as a postdoctoral researcher and works on Project 52. Here, he is interested in understanding the evolution of individual cognition in zebrafish due to size-selective mortality, how this shapes collective cognition and what are the fitness consequences. He is also a guest scientist at IGB Berlin.