Balasubramanian Gopal (born 1970) is an Indian structural biologist, molecular biophysicist and a professor at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of the

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 wa ...

. He is known for his studies on cell wall synthesis in

Staphylococcus aureus ''Staphylococcus aureus'' is a Gram-positive spherically shaped bacterium, a member of the Bacillota, and is a usual member of the microbiota of the body, frequently found in the upper respiratory tract and on the skin. It is often positive ...

and is an elected fellow of the

National Academy of Sciences, India The National Academy of Sciences, India, established in 1930, is the oldest science academy in India. It is located in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Prof. Meghnad Saha was the founder president. Fellows *Suddhasatwa Basu * Sudha Bhattacharya * Ch ...

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 Academ ...

and 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 ...

. He received the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the

Department of Biotechnology The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. It ...

in 2010. 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 science, applied or Fundamenta ...

, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2015, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography

Balasubramnian Gopal, born on 31 August 1970, completed his master's degree at

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

and started his career as a biochemist by joining

Torrent Pharmaceuticals Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd is an Indian multinational pharmaceutical company, owned by Torrent Group and headquartered in Ahmedabad. It was promoted by U. N. Mehta, initially as Trinity Laboratories Ltd, and was later renamed Torrent Pharma ...

at their

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ; Gujarati: Amdavad ) is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 (per t ...

station. Later, he took a break from his job and joined the

(IISc) from where he secured a PhD. Moving to the UK, he did his post-doctoral studies in

crystallography Crystallography is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids. Crystallography is a fundamental subject in the fields of materials science and solid-state physics (condensed matter physics). The wor ...

at the

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (commonly abbreviated to NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR b ...

. Returning to India, he joined the Molecular Biophysics Unit of IISc as a member of ''Lab 301'' where he and his colleagues are engaged in researches on ''structural and mechanistic aspects of membrane-associated proteins involved in inter-cell communication, transcriptional regulation and mediate antimicrobial resistance.'' Gopal is known to have done considerable research in molecular biophysics and has contributed to widening our understanding of the cell wall synthesis in

, a common

gram-positive In bacteriology, gram-positive bacteria are bacteria that give a positive result in the Gram stain test, which is traditionally used to quickly classify bacteria into two broad categories according to their type of cell wall. Gram-positive bacte ...

bacterium found in human respiratory tract and skin. He has published his research findings as articles in peer-reviewed journals and

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 p ...

, an online article repository has listed 77 of them. He has delivered keynote addresses at several seminars including the ''Graduate Students' Meet 2007'' and the 2nd ''International Conference on Structural and Functional Genomics'' organised by Sastra university, Tanjore in August 2016.

Awards and honors

The

awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2010. The

elected him as its fellow in 2013, the same year as he was elected as a fellow by the

. He was awarded the

, one of the highest Indian science awards, by the

in 2015. The elected fellowship of the

reached him in 2016.

Selected bibliography

* * * * * * *

Notes

References

External links