Santanu Bhattacharya

Santanu Bhattacharya is an Indian chemist and chemical biologist and an honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore where upon his return from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, he joined as an Assistant Professor in 1991 and rose to the rank of a Professor in 2001. He is also an honorary fellow of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS Kolkata) where he served as the Director from 2015-2021. Since 2023, he is the Director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati (IISER-Tirupati). 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 wide-ranging research on synthetic and natural lipids, gene delivery vehicles, natural and unnatural amino acids, oligopeptides, hydro- and organogels, bio-analytical sensors, cellular therapy mediate by gene transfection, molecular therapies design via G-quadruplex DNA binding, and biologically active natural product mimics is well known. He has been elected a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy New Delhi, The World Academy of Sciences Trieste, and the Indian Academy of Sciences Bangalore. In 2003, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Government of India's apex scientific research organization, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest Indian award in science, for his contributions to chemical sciences. He has also received the Department of Biotechnology's National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology and the UNESCO TWAS Prize (2010).

Biography

Santanu Bhattacharya, born on 23 April 1958 in Calcutta (now called Kolkata) in the Indian state of West Bengal, graduated in Chemistry (B.Sc. Honors) from the Calcutta University and continued at the university to complete his master's degree from the Rajabazar Science College campus of University of Calcutta. On his return to India, he joined the Indian Institute of Science where he served as an assistant professor (1991–96), associate professor (1996–2001) and a professor (since 2001); he served the department of organic chemistry at IISc as the chair. He was an honorary professor of JNCASR at its Chemical Biology unit. He has carried out several projects which include lipid molecular design and biophysics, peptide designs, structural studies of micelles, DNA binding anti-cancer agents, and design and synthesis of nanomaterials. the online repository of the Indian Academy of Sciences has listed 356 of them. 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 as Bioconjugate Chemistry and Langmuir of American Chemical Society, and the Journal of Materials Nanoscience. 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. He received the international TWAS Prize in 2010 the Ranbaxy Research Award in 2013 and SASTRA-CNR Rao Award in 2017. P. U. Bhagyatara National Award (2004), CDRI Award of the Central Drug Research Institute (2004) and the G. D. Birla Award (2007) are some of the other notable awards he has received. Holder of J. C. Bose National Fellowship in 2008 and Swarnajayanti Fellowship of the Department of Science and Technology during 1998–2003, he was elected as a fellow by the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2000 and he became an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 2007 and The World Academy of Sciences in 2012. He has also delivered several award orations including the D. Ranganathan Memorial Lecture of the Chemical Research Society of India (2007); Dr. Nitya Anand Endowment Lecture of the Indian National Science Academy (2007); the CDRI Diamond Jubilee Lecture, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow (2010); Dr. A.V. Rama Rao Foundation Lecture, JNCASR, Bangalore (2010); Dr. R. A. Mashelkar Endowment Lecture on Advanced Materials, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune (2012); Prof. U. R. Ghatak Endowment Lecture and Gold Medal, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata (2013); Prof. T. R. Seshadri Memorial Lecture, Delhi University, New Delhi (2014); Prof. K. P. Basu Memorial Lecture, Jadavpur University, Kolkata (2015); the 12th Prof. S. Chandrasekhar Memorial Lecture, CeNS, Bengaluru (2015); the 21st Dr. J.N. Baruah Memorial Lecture, CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat (2015); the 6th Annual Chemistry Lecture, JNCASR, Bangalore (2016); the 38th Foundation Day Lecture, Institute of Advanced Study in Science & Technology, Paschim Boragaon, Guwahati (2016); Prof. C.N.R. Rao Distinguished Lecture, IIT Bombay, Mumbai (2018); the 1st Asian CES Lectureship, CRSI, IIT Kanpur (2019); the Acharya P. C. Ray Memorial Award Lecture, Indian Chemical Society (2020); Prof. G. B. Behera Endowment Lecture, Sambalpur University, Odisha (2021); the Acharya P.C. Ray Commemoration Lecture at CSIR-NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram (2021); Prof. V. L. Chopra Foundation Day Lecture, 5th Foundation Day, ICAR-National Institute for Plant Biotechnology, IARI New Delhi (2024); the 5th INST Langmuir Lecture, Institute of Nano Science and Technology, Mohali (2024); Sir Jnan Chandra Ghosh Memorial Lecture at IIT Kharagpur (2024) etc.