Amitabh Joshi

Amitabh Joshi (born 1965) is an Indian evolutionary biologist, population ecologist, geneticist and a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). He heads the Evolutionary Biology Laboratory at JNCASR and is known for his studies on Evolutionary genetics and Population ecology. An elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, and Indian National Science Academy, he was also a J. C. Bose National Fellow (2011-2021) of the Department of Science and Technology. He served as the chief editor of the Journal of Genetics (2008-2014) and Editor of Publications of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2017-2021). 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 2009, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography

Joshi was born on 4 March 1965 to Devi Datt Joshi and Nirmala Joshi (nee Pande) in the Indian city of Agra. He did his schooling in St. Francis Nursery School and St. Peter's College, Agra. He then did his graduation (BSc Hons in Botany, 1982–85, Hindu College, Delhi) and Master's studies (M.Sc. in Genetics,1985–87) from Delhi University South Campus, and moved to Washington State University from where he obtained a PhD in 1993, working with John N. Thompson and Michael E. Moody. His Ph.D. thesis was titled Coevolution and variation in competition between Drosophila species; in addition, his collaboration with Moody resulted in two papers on the cost-of-sex issue, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. During this period, he also worked as a research assistant (1987–88) and a teaching assistant at the university (1987–93). He stayed in the US until 1996 to complete his post-doctoral studies in the laboratory of Laurence D. Mueller of the University of California, Irvine and returned to India to work as a visitor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences of Indian Institute of Science for a month. reaching the position of a professor in 2007. He heads the Evolutionary Biology Laboratory of the institution where he hosts a number of research scholars. In between, he served as a visiting faculty at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study in 2001. and resides in Bengaluru, in Karnataka.

Legacy Joshi continues his early researches on Drosophila but has now combined his evolution studies with theoretical work using computer simulations. His researches have been documented by way of a number of articles and several of them have been listed by many major online article repositories such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academic Tree and PubFacts. He has also published a book, Stability in Model Populations, co-authored by his post-doctoral guide, Laurence D. Mueller. He is on the list of mentors of doctoral studies at the Indian Institute of Science and has guided several scholars in their researches.

At Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Joshi has served as a member of the Screening Committee for Life Sciences and sat as the convenor of the committee in 1999 and 2000.

Awards and honors Joshi was selected as a Young Associate by the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1997 for a period of three years He was elected as a National Academy of Sciences, India fellow in 2002 A J. C. Bose National fellow, Joshi was selected for the National Leadership Award of the Lakshmipat Singhania Academy-IIM Lucknow in 2010. In 2011, the Indian National Science Academy elected him as a fellow.

Selected bibliography Books

Articles