Dr. Puthiyaveetil received bachelor's and master's degrees in Botany from Sir Syed College, Kerala, India. He obtained his Ph.D. in Plant Biochemistry from Queen Mary University of London under the guidance of Prof. John F. Allen. He stayed on at Queen Mary as a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Postdoctoral Research Fellow for another three years before moving on to further postdoctoral research at Washington State University, Pullman, with Prof. Helmut Kirchhoff. Dr. Puthiyaveetil joined Purdue Biochemistry Department as an Assistant Professor in 2016. He is a member of the Purdue Center for Plant Biology.

Steven obtained a bachelor's degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from Grand Valley State University, Michigan and a PhD degree in plant biochemistry from Purdue University. Steven's graduate research at Puthiyaveetil laboatory at Purdue (2018-2024) focused on elucidating the determinants of the functional and biosynthetic assembly of photosystem II, a 1.4 MDa heterooligomeric pigment-protein complex at the heart of oxygenic photosynthesis. His postdoctoral research will build on his graduate research project. For his research accomplishments, Steven has won numerous awards, including the Department of Biochemistry 2020 Henry A. Moses Award, NIFA-AFRI Predoctoral Fellowship, Second prize for best graduate student talk at 2024 ASPB Midwest Meeting, and the 2024 Department of Biochemistry A.K. Balls Award, which recognizes outstanding graduate students at the department.