Kashmir Singh's Biography

Kashmir Singh, Assistant Professor, Panjab University

Dr. Kashmir Singh joined Punjab University, Chandigarh as Assistant professor on 1st July , 2005. With a focus on Plant biotechnology, his research interests span, metabolic engineering of secondary metabolites and biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. After obtaining Master’s degrees in Botany from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, he pursued Ph.D. from the CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology Palampur, HP.

Early in his career, he received the Marie Curie Fellowship from European commission on biotechnology. Later, he received International Research Associateship at Missouri state University, USA. He was also a visiting scientist of McGill University, Montreal Canada, where he worked in the area of stress tolerance in cereal crops. His major contribution in research work was understanding the molecular aspects of catechin biosynthesis in tea plant, where he has identified and cloned all the genes of the pathway. These genes are now being used for quality improvement of tea. Other major research contributions of his group are on discovery of saponins biosynthetic pathway genes in chlorophytum borivilianum, understanding regulation of gene expression by small rRNAs in plant such as stevia, chlorophytum etc and studying the role on cap binding proteins in abiotic stresses.

He has guided 8 Ph.D. and 20 M.Sc. students and has over 50 publications. He has three patents to his credit, some of which are commercialized also. He is member of board of studies, research degree committees, reviewer of international journals and member of grant review committee of USA-BARD grants. He has represented the Institute in international conferences and visited several countries including Poland, USA and Canada.