First hired as a lecturer, she became head of the Chemistry Department at Miranda College, Delhi, and went on to receive an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851,[4] to enable her to conduct postdoctoral work at Imperial College London with Professor D.H.R.

[3][5][6] She began work at Regional Research Laboratory, Trivandrum in 1993, and at IICT, Hyderabad in 1998.,[3] where she became Deputy Director.

Rama Rao Foundation Award, the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Visiting Fellowship, Third World Academy of Sciences Award in Chemistry in 1999 for her work in bio-organic chemistry, and the Sukh Dev Endowment Lectureship.

She was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the recipient of many honors the last of which was The Third World Academy of Sciences Award in chemistry for her outstanding contributions to bio-organic chemistry, particularly supramolecular assemblies, molecular design, chemical simulation of key biological processes, synthesis of functional hybrid peptides and synthesis of nanotubes, in 1999.

She created a protocol which achieved the autonomous reproduction of imidazole, an ingredient of histadine and histamine with pharmaceutical importance.