Ashwani Pareek 's Biography

Ashwani Pareek , Professor, JNU, Adjunct Professor at University of Western Australia

Dr Ashwani Pareek is an Professor of Life Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He obtained his B.Sc (Botany) and M.Sc. (Plant Molecular Biology) in 1990 and 1992, respectively, from the University of Delhi, India. His research work during Ph.D. focused on the analysis of heat shock proteins (HSPs, especially HSP90) and salt stress proteins (SSPs) in rice. After completing his Ph.D. in 1997, he worked in the laboratory of Professor Ralph S. Quatrano, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA to learn “advanced plant molecular biology”,. In 1998, he joined the laboratory of Professor Deepak Pental as a Research Scientist at Delhi University to work on herbicide tolerant Brassica juncea. Soon thereafter, he was appointed as a Lecturer at the newly established GGS Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India, where he played a key role in establishing the School of Biotechnology. After serving this University for four years, he was appointed, in 2003, on the faculty of the School of Life Sciences (SLS) at JNU. The main focus of his research has been towards an understanding of the signaling machinery in plants operative under osmotic stresses such as salinity and drought. He uses the tools of functional genomics, transgenics and bioinformatics to dissect out the cascades of events leading to these stresses in plants, especially the steps involved in “osmosensing”. Ashwani’s honors include: The Fellowship of National Academy of Sciences (FNASc), the Indian National Science Academy (INSA)-ROYAL SOCIETY (UK) exchange visitor’s fellowship 2005, the BOYSCAST Fellowship by Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India (2001); award of “The Rockefeller Foundation” Post-doctoral fellowship in the area of advanced ‘Plant Molecular Biology’ as a part of the ‘Rice Biotechnology Program’.