Award Winners

Many Congratulations!!!! Prof. Anil Kumar for the inaugural Khetrapal Award.

Prof. Anil Kumar obtained his Ph.D. from I.I.T. Kanpur, (1964-69) under the supervision of Prof. B.D.N. Rao. did double resonance NMR experiments in liquids and used Density Matrix description to analyze the results. Later he carried out his Post- Doctoral research with Prof. Sydney Gordon (Georgia Tech) and second Post Doc with Prof. Charles Johnson Jr. (University of North Carolina). During this period, he set up a Fourier Transform set-up for NMR data collection and analysis, which landed him in Zurich with Prof. Richard R. Ernst (1973-76) (Chemistry Nobel 1991). (a) First Fourier MRI, (b) Oscillation in Cross-polarization dynamic (PRL 1974) (c) Development of Two-Dimensional NMR. Prof. Khetrapal was starting a First Superconducting based NMR Facility at IISc, Bangalore, and offered him an Academic position in IISc, which he joined in January 1977. Mentored NMR facility as Resident-in-Charge, Joint Convener and finally Convener. During this period the NMR facility grew from one spectrometer to nearly 8. Starting in 1977 he wrote 2D software ab-initio and carried out Two-dimensional experiments. Studied effects of Strong Couplings in Two- dimensional spectra, both theoretically and experimentally. Went back to Zurich for a year (1979-80) jointly with Prof. Ernst and Prof Kurt Wuthrich (Chemistry Nobel 2002) and did the famous NOESY experiment, which allowed the determination of the 3-Dimensional structure of proteins in solution. Back in Bangalore started study of Cross-Correlations in NMR and wrote a review. Started “Quantum Computing by NMR” in India in the year 2000. He published nearly 40 papers in QC by NMR and graduated 8 Ph.D. in this field and a second PRL in 2011. Total Ph.D. supervised nearly 40 and published nearly 140 papers.

Many Congratulations!!!! Prof. Paul Schanda for the inaugural HS Atreya Award.

Paul Schanda develops and applies solution- and solid-state NMR spectroscopy to characterize proteins, with a particular emphasis on understanding how molecular dynamics underlies biomolecular function. During his PhD with Bernhard Brutscher he worked on fast multidimensional solution-state NMR methods, where his fast-pulsing methods paralleled the sparse-sampling methods that e.g. HS Atreya developed at the same time. These methods (such as SOFAST-HMQC and BEST multidimensional experiments) are in widespread use. During his post-doctoral research with Matthias Ernst and Beat Meier he developed solid-state NMR techniques for studying protein dynamics. As an independent group leader since 2011, first and IBS Grenoble and since 2021 at IST Austria, he combines solution- and solid-state NMR with a host of other biophysical techniques to understand protein dynamics, e.g. in the context of enzyme and chaperone function. He has made contributions in diverse fields, e.g. how protein motion is impacted by the crystalline environment, or how membrane proteins are transported by mitochondrial chaperones

https://ist.ac.at/en/research/schanda-group/

Many Congratulations!!!! Ranabir Das for Prof S Subramanian 60th Birthday Lecture Award for the year 2020.

Dr. Ranabir Das has extensively worked on the mechanisms used by viruses and bacteria to hijack the human cellular system and shutoff the host immune response. He uses NMR spectroscopy to study structure of viral/bacterial proteins. Dr. Ranabir Das joined National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 2014. He setup a NMR facility there, which is catering for both internal and external researchers. Currently, he is working there as an Associate Professor. Dr. Das’s work has shown how the family of Herpes simplex viruses uses the human proteins transcribe the viral DNA and produce viral proteins. His lab showed how the proteins from Shigella shut-down the immune response from the human and replicate efficiently. These studies have provided novel insights on how pathogens survive inside the host and has provided new therapeutic targets for drug discovery. Dr. Das is also interested in designing novel nano-protein drug delivery systems. He has developed new protein motifs that can be used to domain-swap proteins and create delivery systems for targeted delivery. Dr. Das has 23 publications in the last five years, in several important journals like the Nature Communications, JACS, Elife, Structure, Chemical Communications, etc. His research work has been generously funded by several institutes, including the National Cancer Institute, Department of Biotechnology, India, and the Department of Science and Technology, India. He is a member of American Chemical Society, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and NMR Society India.

Many Congratulations!!!! Mahavir Singh for Prof S Subramanian 60th Birthday Lecture Award for the year 2021.

Dr Mahavir Singh is currently an Associate Professor in the Molecular Biophysics Unit of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Dr Singh’s laboratory studies protein-nucleic acid interactions that govern the processes of telomere DNA maintenance, chromatin remodelling, and bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems. They use solution NMR in conjunction with other biophysical methods to study these interactions. Before joining IISc as a faculty member, Dr Singh did his postdoctoral research under Prof. Juli Feigon at UCLA, USA. During this time, he solved the structures of key protein-RNA complexes from the Tetrahymena telomerase holoenzyme complex. Dr Singh did his PhD under the guidance of Prof. Tad A. Holak at the Max-Plank Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany. He studied the structure and interactions of retinoblastoma protein (pRb) with host and viral proteins as part of his thesis work.

Many Congratulations!!!! Dr. Priyanka Aggarwal for being awarded CBMR NMRS Gold medal for the year 2021 for her publications in a calendar year.

Priyanka is currently working on CryoEM of large complexes at gene center @LMU_Muenchen with Prof. Karl-Peter Hopfner Department of Biochemistry, Gene Center, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She completed her doctoral degree with Dr. Neel Sarovar Bhavesh at ICGEB, New Delhi. Before her PhD, she also worked for a year with Dr. Guillaume Thibault at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests lie in understanding the molecular structures and function of macromolecular complexes involved in gene regulation. She was supported by CSIR, DBT for fellowship.

Many Congratulations!!!! Dipita Jharana Rani Award for the year 2021.

Dipita Bhattacharyya is a student pursuing her doctoral studies, since 2017, at the Department of Biophysics, Bose Institute, Kolkata. Her studies are primarily based on the biomolecular applications of solution-state NMR, focusing on the structural dynamics of intrinsically disordered proteins in disease pathogenesis. Following her Masters in Zoology and research with Drosophila sp. cytogenetics, she did her internship in biophysical characterization of Antimicrobial peptides and their mechanism of action at the membranous interface under the supervision of Prof. Anirban Bhunia. This prompted her to extend her studies into the membrane-associated amyloidogenic α-synuclein protein. Working as a Ph.D. scholar, she employed the principles of multitude NMR techniques in gaining high-resolution insight into the early conformers of the protein that triggers the pathogenic amyloidogenesis. She has participated and presented her work in several international and national workshops and conferences and has been recognized for her work with awards such as the EMBO grant, the NMRS travel grant for a workshop in Italy, best poster awards from the NMRS, and the IDP Symposium, and the Sir Nilratan Sircar award for outstanding student. Her studies have been published in several peer-reviewed scientific journals, including six first-author publications in Chemcomm, BBA Biomembranes, ACS Chemical Neuroscience,Biophysical Chemistry, Gene Reports, and Chemistry and Physics of Lipids.