Three Indian-American scientists and one Indian are among 84 new members and 21 foreign associates named last month to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Indian-American scientists named include Shiv Grewal, NIH Distinguished Investigator and laboratory chief at the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.; Vamsi K. Mootha, investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and professor of systems of biology and medicine, MGH Department of Molecular Biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.; and Subir Sachdev, professor of physics, department of physics, Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Among foreign associates is Vijay Raghavan, K., Distinguished Professor and director at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India.
According to his bio data on the National Cancer Institute website, Grewal began his scientific career at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom where he held the Cambridge-Nehru scholarship. After obtaining his PhD in 1992, he joined NCI Frederick as a postdoctoral fellow to pursue his interests in the areas of epigenetic control of gene expression and development. In 1998 Grewal joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory faculty as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor position in 2002, and the following year he was appointed senior investigator at the Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology. He has been awarded the Demerec-Kaufmann award in developmental biology, the 1999 Ellison Medical Foundation new scholar award, the Newcomb Cleveland prize by the American Association for Advancement of Science, NIH Directors’ award and the NIH Merit award.
Trained in internal medicine Mootha specializes in rare mitochondrial diseases. His laboratory uses a blend of genomics, computation, and biochemical physiology to systematically study mitochondrial biology, his biodata on the Harvard website says. Mootha received his B.S. in Mathematical and Computational Science at Stanford University. He then received his M.D. (cum laude) from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where his thesis research focused on mitochondrial energetics. Following an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he pursued postdoctoral training in genomics at the Whitehead Institute.
His research group consists of clinicians, computer scientists, and biologists, who work collaboratively to elucidate the network properties of mitochondria, and how these properties go awry in human disease. His work has led to the discovery of over one dozen Mendelian mitochondrial disease genes, to the discovery that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with the common form of type 2 diabetes mellitus, and to the identification of the molecular component of the mitochondrial calcium uniporter. His work has also led to the development of generic, computational strategies that have now been applied successfully to other human diseases.
Mootha has received a number of honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Judson Daland Prize of the American Philosophical Society, and the Keilin Medal of the Biochemical Society.
Sachdev, who specializes in condensed matter, is known for his research on quantum phase transitions, and for a textbook on the subject. In particular, he is famous for exploiting a connection between the electronic properties of materials near a quantum phase transition and the quantum theory of black holes, his website says. He was educated in India before attending MIT and Harvard, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics. He held professional positions at Bell Labs (1985–1987) and at Yale University (1987–2005), where he was a professor of Physics, before returning to Harvard. He currently holds visiting positions at various universities. His awards are honors include Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Distinguished Research Chair in 2009; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 2003; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow in 1989 and the LeRoy Apker Award in 1982.
Raghavan, also the secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, India, was conferred the Padma Shri by the Government of India last year. He is also a recipient of the Infosys Prize in the life sciences category. Raghavan graduated with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1975, according to his website. He completed his doctoral work in 1983 in the field of Molecular Biology and holds a PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. During his post-doctoral work, from 1984 to 1985, he was a research fellow and then, from 1986 to 1988, a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. In 1988, he joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as a reader and in 1992, when the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), which is under the aegis of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was founded joined NCBS. In August 1991, he moved to Bangalore and was instrumental in the establishment of NCBS there. His fields of specialization are Developmental Biology, Genetics and Neurogenetics and his research primarily focuses on the important principles and mechanisms that control nervous system and muscles during development and how these neuromuscular systems direct specific locomotor behaviors. He is on the Management Board of the International Center for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) and is the director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Platforms.