Achala was born in Varanasi, which is a holy city on the Ganges river in northern India and is known for pilgrimage in the Hindu belief. Achala received her Master’s degree in Agriculture Biotechnology, from Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology, Meerut, India. She completed her PhD in Plant Sciences from the University of Hyderabad, India, in 2018. During her PhD, she worked on the phenotypic and physological characterization of rice plants for increased water use efficiency under drought conditions. Her team developed the genetically modified rice plants overexpressing full length of Arabidopsis thaliana Target of Rapamycin (AtTOR) gene. These transgenic plants resulted in enhanced yield related performance under water-limiting conditions conferring high water-use efficiency (WUE) and high photosynthetic efficiency.

In continuation to the doctoral research, she has also worked as a DBT-Research Associate Fellow at Indian Institute of Rice Research, Hyderabad, India from 2018-2021, which was financially supported by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.

She joined in the Resilient Agriculture group at GIFS as a postdoctoral fellow in October 2021, supervised by Dr. Raju Datla and Dr. Leon Kochian. Currently, she is continuing her research on TOR signaling for improved performance and yield in Arabidopsis and Canola.