Santanu Bhattacharya | |
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 Bhattacharya in 2015 | |
| Born | (1958-04-23)23 April 1958 (age 67) West Bengal, India |
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| Known for | Molecular design of natural and synthetic lipids and membranes for gene delivery and synthesis of novel peptides and for sequence-specific DNA recognition. Synthesis of unnatural amino acids, DNA binding small molecules, and biologically active natural products |
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Santanu Bhattacharya is an Indian chemist and an honorary professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore) where he served as a professor earlier. He is also an honorary fellow and former director of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS Kolkata). At, present he is theDirector of theIndian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati (IISER-Tirupati).[1] He is popular for his interdisciplinary work at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and materials science and introduced this style of investigation in India. His research on synthetic and natural lipids, gene delivery vehicles, natural and unnatural amino acids, oligopeptides, hydro- and organogels, bio-analytical sensors, molecular therapies design via G-quadruplex DNA binding, and biologically active natural product mimics is well known.[2] He has been elected a fellow of theIndian National Science Academy[3] New Delhi,The World Academy of Sciences[4] Trieste, and theIndian Academy of Sciences[5] Bangalore. In 2003,Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Government of India's apex scientific research organization, awarded him theShanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest Indian award in science, for his contributions to chemical sciences.[6] He has also received the Department of Biotechnology'sNational Bioscience Award for Career Development of theDepartment of Biotechnology (2002)[7] and the UNESCO TWAS Prize (2010).[8]
Santanu Bhattacharya, born on 23 April 1958 in Calcutta (now called Kolkata) in the Indian state ofWest Bengal, graduated in Chemistry (B.Sc. Honors) from theCalcutta University and continued at the university to complete his master's degree fromRajabazar Science College campus ofUniversity of Calcutta.[3] Moving to the US, he enrolled for his doctoral studies on bioorganic chemistry at the laboratory of Professor Robert A. Moss of theRutgers University – New Brunswick and after securing a PhD in 1988, he had a post-doctoral stint with ProfessorHar Gobind Khorana, aNobel laureate at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology; the theme of his studies beingsignal transduction ofmembrane proteins.[9] On his return to India, he joined theIndian Institute of Science where he served as an assistant professor (1991–96), associate professor (1996–2001) and a professor (since 2001);[10] he served the department of organic chemistry at IISc as the chair.[11] He was an honorary professor ofJNCASR at its Chemical Biology unit.[3] He served as theDirector of the oldest research institute of Asia, theIndian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) from 2015-2021. He also obliged asDirector (Additional Charge) for theS.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (SNBNCBS) Kolkata, (2016). On 19 April 2023, Professor Bhattacharya joined as theDirector of theIndian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati (IISER-Tirupati).
Focusing his researches at the interfaces of chemistry, biology, materials science and nanotechnology, Bhattacharya made notable contributions in the design and synthesis of lipids, synthetic molecular membranes, gene and drug delivery vehicles, soft matter, molecular gels, small molecular bioanalytic sensors, unnatural amino acids and oligopeptides, G-quadruplex and Duplex-DNA binding small molecules as putative therapeutics, and other biologically active natural product mimics.[12] He has carried out several projects which include lipid molecular design and biophysics, peptide designs, structural studies of micelles, DNA binding anti-cancer agents,[13] and design and synthesis of nanomaterials.[3] He has published his researches by way of several peer-reviewed articles;[14] the online repository of the Indian Academy of Sciences has listed 340 of them.[15] On the academic administration front, he established a laboratory for bio-organic and supramolecular studies at Indian Institute of Science. He has supervised the post-graduate, doctoral and post-doctoral studies of several scholars and has sat in the editorial boards of journals such asBioconjugate Chemistry andLangmuir ofAmerican Chemical Society, and the Journal of Materials Nanoscience.[10]
Bhattacharya received the B. M. Birla Science Award in 1997[16] Swarnajayanti Fellowship Award (DST) in 1998, the Materials Research Society of India Medal in 1999 and the Chemical Research Society of India Bronze Medal in 2000.[3] TheDepartment of Biotechnology awarded him with theNational Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2002[7] and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him in 2003 with theShanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards.[17] He received theTWAS Prize in 2010[8] the Ranbaxy Research Award in 2013 and SASTRA-CNR Rao Award in 2017.[10] P. U. Bhagyatara National Award (2004), CDRI Award of theCentral Drug Research Institute (2004) and the G. D. Birla Award (2007) are some of the other notable awards he has received.[3] Holder of J. C. Bose National Fellowship in 2008 and Swarnajayanti Fellowship of theDepartment of Science and Technology during 1998–2003, he was elected as a fellow by theIndian Academy of Sciences in 2000[5] and he became an elected fellow of theIndian National Science Academy in 2007 andThe World Academy of Sciences in 2012.[4] He has also delivered several award orations including the D. Ranganathan Memorial Lecture of the Chemical Research Society of India (2007) and the Nitya Anand Endowment Lecture of the Indian National Science Academy (2007).[3]
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