S K Brahmachari is the new CSIR chief

Eleven months after RA Mashelkar retired from the leadership of India's apex research body, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the government on Monday appointed Samir K Brahmachari, director, Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (IGIB), New Delhi, as the new chief.

Brahmachari will also head the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) as secretary.

The appointment of Brahmachari, a staunch supporter of open source drug discovery models that can be used for common good, has come at a time global initiatives for collaborative drug discovery are being chalked out under the leadership of the World Health Organisation.

Brahmachari would take over from T Ramasami, secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST), who was given additional charge of CSIR some months ago. Prior to him, the charge was with MK Bhan, secretary, Department of Biotechnology.

Brahmachari is a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, where he was a professor of Molecular Biophysics and Genetic Engineering before joining as the director of IGIB.

He has pioneered functional genomics initiative in India and has successfully led the Indian Genome Variation Consortium project. At present, he is coordinating a national network project in 'In Silico Biology' for drug target development.

Brahmachari is an elected member of the Human Genome Organisation and an elected member of the HUGO Council. He has been elected to the fellowship of all three national academies.

He has also been a member of various task forces and government committees, UN expert group on human rights and ciotechnology, and a council member of the Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists.

He has been included in the Advisory Committee of the X-Prize in Genomics, which comprises leading genomics scientists of the world.