Prof. K. VijayRaghavan

K. VijayRaghavan is a distinguished professor in the field of developmental genetics. He is the former Director, National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS), an institution that he was instrumental in setting up. He is also the former Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, a role that he moved on from in April, 2022.

VijayRaghavan graduated with a Bachelor of Technology degree in 1975 and completed a Master’s in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1977. He was recognised as a Distinguished Alumnus by IIT Kanpur in 2003. He undertook doctoral research from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 1983, in the field of molecular biology. During his postdoctoral work from 1984 to 1988, he was a Research Fellow and a Senior Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

Among his many laurels, VijayRaghavan is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1998) and the Infosys Prize in the Life Sciences (2009). He is a Fellow of The Indian National Science Academy (1999), the World Academy of Sciences (2010), the Royal Society (2012) and the American Philosophical Society (2022). He was conferred the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India, on 26 January 2013. In 2014, he was elected as a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.