Tapas Kundu's Biography

Tapas Kundu, Professor, JNCASR

Prof Tapas K. Kundu was awarded his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in the year 1995. Following his PhD, he had a short stint as a visiting foreign research associate in the National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Rockefeller University, USA (1996-99). He joined JNCASR as in 1999. Prof. Kundu has made outstanding contributions in the area of regulation of gene expression and its link to disease and therapeutics. He is not only elucidating the mechanisms of transcription regulation through the epigenetic modifications, but also targeting them to design new generation diagnostics, as well as therapeutics. Over the years, he has published several research papers in many international journals. Several patent applications from the laboratory have been granted and some are under process, which includes several academically important research reagents with potential commercial values, some of which have already been commercialized by renowned companies. He is the recipient of several awards, noteworthy among which are: the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize from CSIR (2005), the National Academy of Science, India- Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee Award (2008), the Sir JC Bose National Fellowship from DST (2010), the GD Birla award for scientific research (2011) and more recently “The Ranbaxy Research Award 2011 in the field of Medical Sciences – Basic Research” and “India Innovation Award 2012” given by Merck Millipore 2012 (First place). He is the fellow of three major national academies of India and an editorial board member of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). Besides fundamental research, Prof. Kundu is also involved in teaching and organizing science outreach programs. His popular lectures on ‘Genes, Disease and Therapeutics’ have benefitted high school and college students greatly.