| 1 | Name: | Dr. K. VijayRaghavan | |
| Institution: | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research | ||
| Year Elected: | 2021 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1954 | ||
K. VijayRaghavan is Principal Scientific Advisor of the Government of India. He earned his Ph.D. from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, in 1984. Before working for the government, he was a professor at then director of the National Center of Biological Sciences, Bangalore. K. VijayRaghavan is a well-known developmental biologist, noted for his work on integrated, sequential development of sensory and locomotory organs of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster. He has led the Indian scientific community—the third largest in the world—as the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. Thus, he is India’s top science policy maker at time when the pandemic is spreading all over the country. Earlier he was Secretary to the Government of India, in-charge of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), a very large government agency that oversees several national research institutes, affiliated with DBT. His election as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) recognizes his scientific accomplishments. He is accomplished in both doing science and influencing science policy. Among his awards are the Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (1998) and the HK Firodia Award (2012). He is a member of the Indian Academy of Sciences (1997), Indian National Science Academy (1999), TWAS (Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, 2010), the Royal Society (2012), and the National Academy of Sciences (2014). He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |||