Dorairajan Balasubramanian

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Dorairajan Balasubramanian
Born (1939-08-28) 28 August 1939 (age 84)
Ocular biochemistry
SpouseShakti
Children2
Awards
Padma Shri

National Order of Merit (France)

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize

Third World Academy of Science
Award
Khwarizmi Award
UNESCO Kalinga Prize
INSA Indira Gandhi Prize
DST National Prize
Goyal Prize
INSA J. C. Bose Medal
Om Prakash Bhasin Award
IACS Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar Prize
Fukui Award
Ranbaxy
Research Award
SBCI Sarma Memorial Award
FICCI
Award
ICMR M. O. T. Iyengar Award
Rev. Fr. L. M. Yeddanapalli Memorial Award

WebsiteProfile on Academy of Sciences Leopoldina

Dorairajan Balasubramanian, popularly known as Professor Balu, is an Indian biophysical chemist

Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.[10]

Biography

Dorairajan Balasubramanian was born on 28 August 1939

BITS, Pilani.[2][3][4][5] He moved to the United States in 1960 for researching for his doctoral studies and completed it in 1965 to obtain PhD[5] in biophysical chemistry from Columbia University.[2][3][4][8] He continued in the United States for his post doctoral research as a Jane Coffin Childs Fund Fellow at the University of Minnesota Medical School till 1966.[2][3][4][5][8]

Balasubramanian returned to India in 1966 and joined the

Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India.[2][3][4]

Balasubramanian is married to Shakti who is associated with ETV as a producer and the couple has two daughters.[3][4] The elder daughter, Katyayani is a research analyst and the younger one, Akhila works as a public health professional.[3][4] The family lives in Hyderabad.[3][5]

Positions

Balasubramanian is a visiting scientist at the National Eye Institute, Bethesda and is a senior Fellow of ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne.[2] He is the chairman of the Task Force on Stem Cell Research set up by the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India.[5] He is a former president of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2007-2010)[4][8] and is the incumbent the chairman of the Biotechnology Advisory Council of the Government of Andhra Pradesh.[3] A former secretary general of The World Academy of Sciences,[3][4] he has served as the project coordinator of Translational Centre in Eye Diseases of Champalimaud Foundation (C-TRACER) and the Affordable Healthcare Project of the Wellcome Trust for finding solutions for the use of scaffolds for cultivating stem cells.[8] He is a former member of the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies,[12] the International Basic Sciences Panel[13] of UNESCO and the International Chapter Affiliate Committee of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO),[14] United States.[8] He has also served as an editorial board member of several international journals.[4][5] He had also been appointed as one of the honorary advisory committee members for the International Conference on Genome Biology 2019 (ICGB'19) by the School of Biological Sciences of Madurai Kamaraj University.[15]

Legacy

Cataract in human eye
Ginko tree
Withania

Balasubramanian started his research activities in 1965 focusing on the structure and functions of proteins and

Ginko Biloba[20] and Withania somnifera extracts.[21] These substances contained antioxidants and cytoprotective compounds which slow down the progression of oxidative cataract and this was verified during experiments in animals.[1]

Advanced vision loss from Glaucoma.

After the turn of the century, Balasubramanian and his colleagues started working on inherited eye diseases

congenital glaucoma[5][22] with a sampling set of over 400 families and this has helped in revealing 15 mutations in the gene CYP1B1, with mutation R368H being the most common one.[4][22] The research has also recorded the genotype–phenotype correlations and the structural changes occur in mutated protein[4][22] and these findings have assisted in clinical prediction of the disease and in early therapeutic intervention to avert blindness.[1]

Balasubramanian is now working on

corneal grafts or transplantation.[1] These tests are reported to be the largest successful human trial of adult stem cell therapy in the world.[1][4]

Balasubramanian has published 6 books[3] of which two books,[3] one on chemistry and the other in biotechnology, are prescribed text books for academic studies.[1][4][24] He is credited with over 450 articles,[3][4] published in peer reviewed national and international journals[2][25] and Microsoft Academic Search, an online repository of scientific articles, has listed 52 of them.[26] He has presented more than 170 scientific papers[1][3][4][5] and has contributed in popularizing science by writing columns in leading newspapers such as The Hindu and The Times of India since 1980.[3][4][24][27] On the academic front, he has assisted 16 doctoral students in their PhD studies.[5] His efforts are also reported behind the establishment of a vaccine unit at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and in designing a quality improvement program for the Sericulture Laboratory of the state government.[4]

Awards and recognitions

Padma Shri India IIIe Klasse
Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite (France)

Dorairajan Balasubramanian, an honorary Professor of the

Academy of Sciences Leopoldina,[8] Germany, Mauritian Academy of Sciences[8] and the International Molecular Biology Network.[11]

He has delivered many award lectures in India and abroad. In 1985, he delivered the National Lecture of the University Grants Commission and the next year, the Prof. K. Venkataraman Endowment Lecture.[11] K. S. G. Doss Memorial Lecture and the SERC National Lecture were delivered in 1991 followed by Pasteur Centenary Lecture, R. P. Mitra Memorial Lecture and the Platinum Jubilee Lecture of the Indian Science Congress Association in 1995. Some of the other award lectures given by Balasubramanian are:[11]

  • Madurai Kamaraj University Convocation Address
  • Ranganathan Centre for Information Studies Annual Lecture
  • J. C. Ray Memorial Oration Award
  • C. V. Raman Lecture
  • B. C. Guha Memorial Lecture
  • Lily Pithavadian Endowment Lecture
  • BHU Foundation Lecture
  • TNAU-MFL Endowment Lecture
  • Kumari L. A. Meera Memorial Lecture
  • Prof. McBain Memorial Lecture
  • Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany
    Foundation Day Lecture
  • Jana Reddy Venkata Reddy Endowment Lecture
  • Sri Venugopal Oration Medical Research Foundation Lecture
  • Elite School of Optometry Convocation Address Foundation Day Lecture
  • Dr. P. S. Murthy Memorial Lecture
  • Dr. Ram Mohan Rao Oration
  • Dr. K. Gopalakrishna Oration

Balasubramanian received his first award, the Rev. Fr. L. M. Yeddanapalli Memorial Award and Medal of the

FICCI Award and the ICMR M. O. T. Iyengar Award.[11] He received the Ranbaxy Award in 1990,[2] the Fukui Award of the National Foundation for Eye Research, United States, in 1991 and Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar Prize from the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in 1994.[11]

The

Chevalier de l’Ordre National de Merite, the same year.[2][4][5] He received a third award in 2002 from the Department of Science and Technology, the National Prize for Science Popularization.[5][11] He is also a recipient of the INSA Indira Gandhi Prize[5][11] and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centenary Award for Achievement in Science of the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA).[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "TPB Research". TPB. 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r "EVER Profile". EVER. 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u "TPB". TPB. 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac "Bitsaa". Bitsaa. 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x "INSA". INSA. 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  6. ^ "Prof. Dorairajan Balasubramanian-President 2007-09". YouTube video. Indian Academy of Sciences. 6 November 2013. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  7. ^ "Israel Asia Centre Interview". Israel Asia Centre. June 2010. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r "Leopoldina" (PDF). Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina. 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  9. ^ a b c "LVPEI". LVPEI. 2015. Archived from the original on 17 January 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  10. ^ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Padma Awards. 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 October 2015. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "TPB Awards". TPB. 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  12. ISBN 978-0-309-56417-5
    . Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  13. ^ "IBSP". IBSP. 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  14. ^ "ARVO". ARVO. 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  15. ^ "School of Biological Sciences Madurai Kamaraj University Madurai - 625021, India". School of Biological Sciences Madurai Kamaraj University. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
  16. S2CID 35085602
    .
  17. ^ "WHO". WHO. 2015. Archived from the original on 21 March 2006. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  18. S2CID 23427305
    .
  19. PMID 12387790
    .
  20. ^ Geetha Natarajan; Talla Venu; D. Balasubramanian (October 2003). "Approaches to relieve the burden of cataract blindness through natural antioxidants: use of Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera)". Current Science. 85 (7): 1065–1071.
  21. ^
    PMID 11980847
    .
  22. ISBN 9789048190751
    .
  23. ^ a b "IISc". IISc. 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  24. ^ "Contributions". TPB. 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  25. ^ "Microsoft Academic Research". Microsoft Academic Research. 2015. Archived from the original on 24 June 2016. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  26. ^ "Newspaper". TPB. 2015. Archived from the original on 28 January 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2015.
  27. ^ "Kalinga Prize". Kalinga Foundation. 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.

External links

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