Mounika Rapolu was born in India, where she graduated Integrated Masters in Physics with specialization in optics from University of Hyderabad. She was a recipient of Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE), a merit fellowship during her Integrated Masters in Physics for a span of 5 years. She is also recipient of Assured Opportunity for Research Careers (AORC) fellowship. She had worked in field of Optical tweezers, Nonlinear optics, Ultrafast spectroscopy during her projects. Her scientific research resulted in form of some peer reviewed international publications. She continued her scientific career at University of Strasbourg, France where she worked on Two-Dimensional Spectral Shearing Interferometer (2DSI) for short pulse for ~6 fs characterization and Impulsive Vibrational Coherence Spectroscopy (IVCS) for Biomimetic photo switches.
Mounika joined the Department of Physical Chemistry of Biological Systems at IPC in the POB Group (Physical Optics and Biophotonics Group led by Prof. Wojtkowski, where she is working on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) for in-vivo deep-tissue imaging, cellular imaging of brain and eye of the mouse.