Amitabh Joshi (born 1965) is an Indian evolutionary biologist, population ecologist, geneticist and a professor at

Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research The Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) is a multidisciplinary research institute located at Jakkur, Bangalore, India. It was established by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, to ...

(JNCASR). He heads the ''Evolutionary Biology Laboratory'' at JNCASR and is known for his studies on

Evolutionary genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and popu ...

and

Population ecology Population ecology is a sub-field of ecology that deals with the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the environment, such as birth and death rates, and by immigration and emigration. The discipline is import ...

. An elected fellow of the

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general meet ...

, National Academy of Sciences, India, and

Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi for Indian scientists in all branches of science and technology. In August 2019, Dr. Chandrima Shaha was appointed as the president of Indian National Science Acade ...

, he was also a J. C. Bose National Fellow (2011-2021) of the Department of Science and Technology. He served as the Chief Editor of the Journal of Genetics (2008-2014) and Editor of Publications of the

(2017-2021). The

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada''), abbreviated as CSIR, was established by the Government of India in September 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the l ...

, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is a science award in India given annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for notable and outstanding research, applied or fundamental, in biology, ...

, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2009, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography

Joshi was born on 4 March 1965 to Devi Datt Joshi and Nirmala Joshi (nee Pande) in the Indian city of

Agra Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra ...

. He did his schooling in St. Francis Nursery School and St. Peter's College, Agra. He then did his graduation (BSc Hons in Botany, 1982-85,

Hindu College, Delhi Hindu College is a constituent college of the University of Delhi in New Delhi, India. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in sciences, humanities, social sciences and commerce. In 2022, it is ranked 2nd nationally by Nat ...

) and Master's studies (M.Sc. in Genetics,1985-87) from

Delhi University Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence (IoE) ...

South Campus, and moved to

Washington State University Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant uni ...

from where he obtained a PhD in 1993, working with John N. Thompson and Michael E. Moody. His Ph.D. thesis was titled ''Coevolution and variation in competition between

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many speci ...

species;'' in addition, his collaboration with Moody resulted in two papers on the cost-of-sex issue, published in the

Journal of Theoretical Biology The ''Journal of Theoretical Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering theoretical biology, as well as mathematical, computational, and statistical aspects of biology. Some research areas covered by the journal include cell ...

. During this period, he also worked as a research assistant (1987–88) and a teaching assistant at the university (1987–93). He stayed in the US until 1996 to complete his post-doctoral studies in the laboratory o
Laurence D. Mueller
of the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

and returned to India to work as a visitor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences of

Indian Institute of Science The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The institute was ...

for a month. In April 1996, he joined

as a member of faculty at the ''Animal Behaviour Unit'' and shifted to ''Evolutionary and Organismal Biology Unit'' in 1998 where he rose in rank from a faculty fellow (1998–2001) to an associate professor, reaching the position of a professor in 2007. He heads the Evolutionary Biology Laboratory of the institution where he hosts a number of research scholars. In between, he served as a visiting faculty at the

Berlin Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (german: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) is an interdisciplinary institute founded in 1981 in Grunewald, Berlin, Germany, dedicated to research projects in the natural and social sciences. It is model ...

in 2001. He is also an adjunct faculty of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali and resides in

Bengaluru Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

, in

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO 15919, ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reor ...

Legacy

Joshi continues his early researches on Drosophila but has now combined his evolution studies with theoretical work using computer simulations. His researches focuses on the inter-relations between the genetics of organisms and their ecology and the influence of these factors in their evolutionary path. His laboratory studies various evolutionary aspects such as the rate of development, patterns of progeny and ageing and investigates the development of competitive abilities and stress resistance in organisms. His researches have been documented by way of a number of articles and several of them have been listed by many major online article repositories such as

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...

ResearchGate ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by ''Nature'' and a 2016 article in ''Times Higher Education'' ...

, Academic Tree and PubFacts. He has also published a book, ''Stability in Model Populations'', co-authored by his post-doctoral guide, Laurence D. Mueller. He is on the list of mentors of doctoral studies at the

and has guided several scholars in their researches. At

, Joshi has served as a member of the Screening Committee for Life Sciences and sat as the convenor of the committee in 1999 and 2000. He is a former member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Evolutionary and Organismal Biology Unit of JNCASR during 1999–2001 and was the coordinator of the ''Discussion Meeting on Origin and Evolution of Life'', an

ISRO The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO; ) is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space (DOS) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman o ...

- IAS event held in

Coorg Kodagu (also known by its former name Coorg) is an administrative district in the Karnataka state of India. Before 1956, it was an administratively separate Coorg State, at which point it was merged into an enlarged Mysore State. It occupies ...

in 2000. He was also associated in organizing seminars and conferences such as the Association for Tropical Biology-Annual Meeting (Bengaluru 2001), One-Day Symposium on Evolutionary Biology in honour of Stephen Jay Gould (JNCASR 2002), Workshop on Adaptation and Time (JNCASR 2002) and Four Day Lecture Programme on Evolutionary and Organismal Biology (Delhi University 2002). He is a former member of the Vice Chancellor's Empowered Committee for Restructuring the Undergraduate Science Programme of Delhi University (2002–04), Planning Committee of Indian School in Chronobiology (2002), Expert Consultative Committee of the Department of Science and Technology (2004) and Sectional Committee of

for Animal and Plant Sciences (2004–06) and sits in the Board of Studies in Genetics of

Mysore University The University of Mysore is a public state university in Mysore, Karnataka, India. The university was founded during the reign of Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, the Maharaja of Mysore. The university is recognised by the University Grants Commission ...

and Project Advisory Committee for Animal Sciences of Department of Science and Technology. He has been associated with Resonance: Journal of Science Education (editorial board member, associate editor), Journal of Biosciences on the Origin of Life (guest editor 1997–98), Journal of Genetics on ''Evolutionary genetics: the Drosophila model'' (guest editor–2003) and the Journal of Genetics (editor). He was also among the 370 scientists who expresses their disapproval of the handling of 2016 JNU protests.

Awards and honors

Joshi was selected as a ''Young Associate'' by the

in 1997 for a period of three years and was elected as its fellow in 2001. The same year, he was elected by

as a fellow for his project, ''Life History Evolution in Drosophila''. He was elected as a National Academy of Sciences, India fellow in 2002 and the

awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2009 for his contributions to Biological Sciences. A J. C. Bose National fellow, Joshi was selected for the National Leadership Award of the

Lakshmipat Singhania Academy Lakshmipat Singhania Academy (LSA) are a group of schools run by Lakshmipat Singhania Education Foundation, a subsidiary of the J.K. Group. There are two branches of LSA - in Kolkata, West Bengal and Bissau, Jhunjhunu District, Rajasthan. T ...

IIM Lucknow The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are central government-owned-public business schools for management offering undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and executive programmes along with some additional courses in the field of busines ...

Biography

Legacy

Awards and honors

Selected bibliography

Books

Articles

See also

Notes

References

External links

Further reading