Narayanaswamy Srinivasan (born 1962) was an Indian molecular biophysicist and a professor and the head of ''Proteins: Structure, Function and Evolutionary Group'' (N. S. Group) at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of the Indian Institute of Science. He is known for his researches in the fields of computational genomics and protein structure analysis. An elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and 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 ...

, he is a J. C. Bose National fellow 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 ...

and a recipient of the

National Bioscience Award for Career Development The National Bio-science Award for Career Development or N-BIOS Prize is an Indian science award for recognizing excellence and promoting research in bio-sciences disciplines. It was instituted in 1999 by the Department of Biotechnology of the Gov ...

of the Department of Science and Technology. 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, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2007, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography

N. Srinivasan, born on the

April Fool's Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...

of 1962 in

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

in the south Indian state of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

, graduated in physics from the University of Madras in 1982 and continued at the university to complete his master's degree in biophysics at the Department of Crystallography and Biophysics in 1984. Joining the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), he secured a PhD in 1991 for his thesis, ''Conformational studies on globular proteins: Data analysis'', and served as a senior research fellow at IISc, assisting

Padmanabhan Balaram Padmanabhan Balaram is an Indian biochemist and a former director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. He is a recipient of the third highest Indian civilian honour of Padma Bhushan (2014) as well as the TWAS Prize (1994). He ...

, a noted biochemist and Padma Bhushan recipient. His stint at Balaram's laboratory lasted only 10 months and in October 1991, he moved to the Department of Crystallography at

Birkbeck College Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...

to work with Tom Blundell and stayed there till 1994 when he shifted his base to

Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Ludwig Cancer Research is an international community of scientists focused on cancer research, with the goal of preventing and controlling cancer. It encompasses the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, an international non-profit organization f ...

where he had the opportunity to work under Mike Waterfield. Two years later, he was reunited with Tom Blundell at the Department of Biochemistry of the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and completed his post-doctoral studies there in May 1998. Srininvasan returned to India the same year and joined the Indian Institute of Science to serve at the Molecular Biophysics Unit (MBU) as an assistant professor and a senior fellow of the

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

. In 2010, he was promoted as a professor and he heads the ''Proteins : Structure, Function and Evolutionary Group'', popularly known as N. S. Group, of the MBU. In between, he served as an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck College from 1998 to 2000 and is a visiting professor at

University of La Réunion The University of Reunion Island (''Université de la Réunion'') is a French university in the Academy of Réunion. It is the first and only European university in the Indian Ocean. Established in 1982, it has grown steadily over the years in t ...

(since 2004), a senior fellow at Manchester University (since 2008) and a visiting professor of

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(July 2012).

Legacy

Srinivasan's researches were broadly on protein evolution with regard to its structure, functions and interactions. He worked on cellular signal transduction pathways and proteins involved in the process through modeling and computational studies. Deploying computational genomics, he is known to have assisted in identifying similar proteins with shared ''structural and functional features''. His research findings have been published in several articles; online article repositories such as

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and

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'' ...

have listed 345 and 391 of his articles respectively. He has been granted patents for two of his inventions related to

nucleotide sequences A nucleic acid sequence is a succession of bases signified by a series of a set of five different letters that indicate the order of nucleotides forming alleles within a DNA (using GACT) or RNA (GACU) molecule. By convention, sequences are usu ...

. His ongoing project, ''Multi-macromolecular assemblies'', relates to 3-D structures of large macromolecular machines. Srinivasan is a former member of the committee on ''Affiliates and Special Interests Group'' of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and a member of the Structural Biology and Structural Genomics section of the Faculty of 1000. He is associated with several science journals; as an editorial board member with

, PLoS ONE, F1000 Research, International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, Research and Reviews in Biosciences,

Resonance Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscillatin ...

, In Silico Biology, Scientific World Journal, Biology Direct and

Scientific Reports ''Scientific Reports'' is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific mega journal published by Nature Portfolio, covering all areas of the natural sciences. The journal was established in 2011. The journal states that their aim is to assess solely th ...

; as an associate editor at ''International Journal of Knowledge Discovery in Bioinformatics'' and ''Bioinformation'' and as a guest editor with

PLoS Computational Biology ''PLOS Computational Biology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering computational biology. It was established in 2005 by the Public Library of Science in association with the International Society for Computational B ...

Journal of Biosciences The ''Journal of Biosciences'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru, India. The current editor-in-chief is Prof. B J Rao (IISER Tirupati, Tirupati). According to the ''Journal Citation Rep ...

, ''Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology'' and Current Opinions in Structural Biology.(ongoing). He was associated with PRIB 2007, an international conference on ''Pattern Recognition In Bioinformatics'', held in Singapore in 2007 as a member of the program committee and has delivered several featured lectures and keynote addresses which included the ''Keystone Symposium on Multiprotein Complexes'' (Cambridge 2006), and Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Conference (Melbourne 2012). On the academic front, he has served as the thesis examiner for a number of Indian universities and as the coordinator of integrated doctoral and BS programs in Biology of Indian Institute of Science. He also sits in the Scientific Advisory Board of ''Jubilant Biosys'', a research and development firm involved in drug discovery services.

Awards and honors

The

of India awarded Srinivasan the

in 2004. The year 2007 brought him the

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 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, as well as the elected fellowship of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the

. He also holds the Honorary Research Fellowship of

and the International Senior Fellowship of the

Selected bibliography

* * * * * * *

Patents

* *

Notes

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Srinivasan, Narayanaswamy Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Biological Science 1962 births Scientists from Chennai University of Madras alumni Indian Institute of Science alumni Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences Fellows of the National Academy of Sciences, India N-BIOS Prize recipients Tamil academics Living people 20th-century Indian biologists