Biotechnology in India - Reworking A Strategy

Dr. George John is a former Senior Advisor, Dept. of Biotechnology, Govt of India and former Vice Chancellor, Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi. He has over 35 years of experience in various national and international organizations as a scientist, research manager, policy maker and institution builder. He has a Masters and a Ph.D from the University of Madras. He was a scientist in the Agricultural Research Service from 1978 to 1992, and later on in the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India from 1992 to 2013. He was the Vice Chancellor of Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi from Sept 2014 to Sept 2016. He contributed to the areas of animal biotechnology, aquaculture, marine biotechnology, and public private partnership. He was a senior scientist at WorldFish (CGIAR), Cairo from 2001 to 2006. He was involved in various national and international committees and also in creation of a new institute of animal biotechnology. Dr. John implemented the Small Business Innovation Research Initiative (SBIRI) for promoting public-private partnership and bio-entrepreneurship. He has published about 50 papers in peer reviewed national and international journals and book chapters.

Dr. Amulya K. Panda worked at National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi from 1990 to 2021 and retired as its Director in May 2021. He is past president, Association of Microbiologists of India 2017, Member, Scientific Board of Pharmacopeia Commission of India (2021-2024) and Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (Cambridge) since 2020. He has a B. Tech degree from HBTI, Kanpur, Master’s from IIT Madras and Ph D from IIT Delhi. He was a visiting scientist at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, USA (1994). His area of expertise is in bioprocess engineering that includes fermentation, protein refolding, and formulation of biologicals using nanoparticles. Dr. Panda reported the highest amount of recombinant protein expression among the earliest Indian studies (1999). Novel protein refolding methods developed by him have been accepted worldwide for high throughput recovery of bioactive protein from inclusion bodies of E. coli (2005). He was awarded Young Asian Biotechnologist Prize from the Society for Biotechnology, Japan, for the year 2004. He has published 165 research papers, 12 book chapters and is an inventor of 35 patents. Currently he is Associate Director at Panacea Biotec Limited, New Delhi.