Alok Bhattacharya

Alok Bhattacharya (born 2 February 1951) is an Indian parasitologist, academic and a professor at the School of Life Sciences of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He chairs the Biotechnology Information System Network (BITSNET) as well as the Life Sciences Expert Committee of FIST program of the Department of Science and Technology (DST). He is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy and is known for his studies on Entamoeba histolytica and species-specific calcium binding protein and its gene.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1994, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography Alok Bhattacharya, born on 2 February 1951, did his graduate studies in science at Hansraj College of the University of Delhi and obtained a master's degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1972. Subsequently, he did his doctoral research at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) under the guidance of Asis Datta, a renowned geneticist and Padma Bhushan laureate, to secure a PhD in 1976. He moved to the US for his post-doctoral studies which he did at the Laboratory of Pathophysiology of National Cancer Institute during 1977–79 and at the Springer Lab of Harvard Medical School from 1979 to 1981. Returning to India the same year, he joined the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Delhi and worked there as a senior research officer at the Department of Biochemistry till 1982 when he joined Tata Research Development and Design Centre of the Tata Consultancy Services located in Pune, where he worked till 1985. In 1986, Bhattacharya had a short stint at the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases of the National Institutes of Health as a guest researcher, after which he joined his alma mater, Jawaharlal Nehru University, as an associate professor at their School of Life Sciences, where he is the incumbent professor and adjunct faculty. and a visiting faculty at Banaras Hindu University.

Alok Bhattacharya is married to Sudha Bhattacharya, a known parasitologist. She is a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and is a co-author of some of his publications. The couple lives in Delhi.

Legacy

Bhattacharya's researches were focused on parasitology, computation biology and bioinformatics, with special focus on the biology of Entamoeba histolytica, an anaerobic parasitic protozoan causing amoebiasis. His team developed new genomic tools and also proposed new algorithms for the identification of genomic variations. His work on lipophosphoglycan and its identification and characterization as well as on the species-specific calcium binding protein and its gene are reported to have been pioneering. These studies are known to have widened the understanding of the pathogenesis of the protozoan at the molecular level. For pursuing his researches on Entamoeba histolytica, he founded a dedicated laboratory at JNU. and his researches are documented in a number of articles of which 188 have been listed by ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles.

Bhattacharya is associated with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and is the chairman of two of DST's initiatives. Biotechnology Information System Network, a bioinformatics program for establishing a centralised database and nationwide network of affiliated organizations is one He serves as a member of the governing council of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), as a member of CSIR Society and as a member of the research councils of Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology and Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, both constituent laboratories of CSIR. He sits in the USER committee of the Department of Science and Technology and chairs the Task force on Bioinformatics, Computation Biology and Systems Biology of the Department of Biotechnology. He is the managing trustee of GNE-Myopathy International, a forum of patients who suffer from GNE-Myopathy, a genetic disorder affecting young people and is associated with several science journals including Parasitology International, Journal of Biosciences, Genome Analysis, Bioinformatics: From Molecules to systems, International Journal of Integrative Biology, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and Nature. serves as a member for internal expert panel of the Council of Indian Institutes of Technology and is involved with the Project AMOEBAC of the Infect-ERA, a global organization for researches on human infectious diseases. He has delivered several guest lectures and keynote addresses and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Symposium on Bioinformatics and Computational Systems Biology organized by the National Network for Mathematical and Computational Biology (NNMCB) of the Department of Science and Technology to be held during 12–14 November 2016 at Central University of Himachal Pradesh. He has also mentored research scholars in their doctoral researches.

Awards and honors Bhattacharya, a Robert McNamara Fellow of the World Bank (1985–86),

Selected bibliography