Satyajit Mayor (born 1963) is an Indian

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize ...

. He serves as director of the

National Centre for Biological Sciences National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore, Karnataka, is a research centre specialising in biological research. It is a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) under the Department of Atomic Energy of the Go ...

Bangalore 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 ...

. Mayor is the former director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) at Bangalore which has a focus on the study of

stem cell In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of ...

and regenerative biology. In 2012, Mayor won the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to r ...

for

life sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, th ...

for his study of regulated cell surface organization and membrane dynamics.

Education

Mayor studied

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...

at the

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay or IITB) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is considered as one of the best engineering universities in India and is top rank ...

and was awarded his PhD in

from The Rockefeller University, New York. He worked as a post-doctoral fellow at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, where he developed tools to study the trafficking of membrane lipids and GPI-anchored proteins in mammalian cells using quantitative fluorescence microscopy.

Research

Mayor started his laboratory at NCBS in 1995 after the completion of his post-doctoral research at Columbia University. "The broad aim of Prof Mayor’s laboratory is to provide an understanding of the molecular mechanisms of

endocytosis Endocytosis is a cellular process in which substances are brought into the cell. The material to be internalized is surrounded by an area of cell membrane, which then buds off inside the cell to form a vesicle containing the ingested material. ...

in metazoan cells, and study this phenomenon at many scales. At the molecular scale his group wants to uncover the molecular players in endocytic processes; at the mesoscopic scale research in his laboratory attempts to provide a physical description of

cell membrane The cell membrane (also known as the plasma membrane (PM) or cytoplasmic membrane, and historically referred to as the plasmalemma) is a biological membrane that separates and protects the interior of all cells from the outside environment (t ...

structure and organization process and its material properties; at the cellular scale the work is aimed at synthesizing a role for endocytosis in

cellular signalling In biology, cell signaling (cell signalling in British English) or cell communication is the ability of a cell to receive, process, and transmit signals with its environment and with itself. Cell signaling is a fundamental property of all cellular ...

and cell surface homeostasis; at the scale of the tissue the group wishes to determine how control of endocytosis impinges on many developmental programs in tissue morphogenesis (http://www.ncbs.res.in/mayor)." Professor Mayor is the recipient of several national and international awards such as the Wellcome Trust International Senior Research Fellowship, Swarnajayanti Fellowship, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and the JC Bose Fellowship.

Awards and honors

* Elected as Foreign Associate of the US

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

, 2015. * Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Bombay, 2013 * Elected

EMBO Embo ( gd, Eurabol, IPA: �iaɾəpɔɫ̪ is a village in the Highland Council Area in Scotland and the former postal county of Sutherland, about north-northeast of Dornoch. On 16 July 1988, Embo declared itself independent from the rest of the ...

Fellow, 2013 *

for Life Sciences, 2012 *

TWAS Prize This is a list of recipients of the TWAS Prize, awarded annually by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Summary Agricultural Sciences Biology Chemistry Earth Sciences Engineering Sciences Mathematics Medical Sc ...

in Biology, 2010 * EMBO Global Lecturer, 2010 * JC Bose Fellowship, DST, 2006-2011 (renewed till 2016). * Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, CSIR, 2003. *

Swarnajayanti Fellowship The Swarnajayanti Fellowship (SJ) is a research fellowship in India awarded annually by the Department of Science and Technology (India) for notable and outstanding research by young scientists, applied or fundamental, in biology, chemistry, e ...

, DST, 2003-2008. * Wellcome Trust International Senior Research Fellow (Biomedical Research, India), 1999-2004. * Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience Award, 2001 * Helen Hays Whitney Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 1992-1995. * The Rockefeller-Oxford Student Exchange Program Recipient, 1988. * Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust Graduate Fellowship, 1986-1991. * Visiting Students Research Program Recipient (TIFR), 1984.

References

External links

*
Lab Website
1963 births Living people Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy National Centre for Biological Sciences faculty IIT Bombay alumni Rockefeller University alumni TWAS laureates Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Biological Science Scientific American people {{India-scientist-stub