Navaneethan completed his B.Tech. in Biotechnology at VIT University, Vellore campus (India) in 2010. He did his bachelor's thesis under Prof. C. Rajasekaran (VIT University) and Prof. Sunil Nautiyal, ISEC, Bengaluru (India). He then moved to Uppsala University (Sweden) where he completed his MMedSci in Infection Biology in 2013. For his thesis, he worked on tigecycline resistance in Escherichia coli under Prof. Dan I Andersson.

In 2012, he received a Max Planck Society stipend (Germany) and pursued his MSc in Molecular Biology at Goettingen University (Germany), finishing in 2014. During this period, he did his thesis on Spinach aptamers under Dr. Claudia Hoebartner at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Goettingen (Germany). After this, he had a short stay at McGill University, Montreal (Canada), working under Prof. Mark Wainberg on drug resistance in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and drug development against dengue virus (DENV).

Between 2015 and 2020, he did his PhD at Heidelberg University, Heidelberg (Germany), working on chromosome segregation and cell division in E. coli, inteins, and optogenetics in the lab of Prof. Barbara Di Ventura.

He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Microbiology in the Division of Medical Sciences at the Chester Medical School. Further, he is currently the Course Leader for BSc Microbiology. Students can contact him for any questions about the BSc Microbiology course and potential dissertation projects. Prospective self-funded PhD students with an interest in Bioinformatics can contact him with a research proposal.