Girdhar Pandey's Biography

Girdhar Pandey, Professor, University of Delhi

Prof. Girdhar K. Pandey received B.Sc (Hon.) in Biochemistry from Delhi University and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from Banaras Hindu University (BHU), India. He was awarded Ph.D. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and then pursued post-doctoral career at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California at Berkeley. There, he extended the work in the field of calcium mediated signaling in Arabidopsis by studying CBL-CIPK, phosphatases, channels/transporters, and transcription factors involved in abiotic stresses. Currently, he is working as Professor in the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, Delhi University South Campus. His group’s research interest is to understand the detail mechanistic interplay of signal transduction networks in plant under mineral nutrient deficiency (mostly K+, Ca2+ and NO3-) and abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity and oxidative stresses. His laboratory is working on the coding and decoding of mineral nutrient deficiency and abiotic stress signals by studying several signaling components such as phospholipases (PLA, PLC, and PLD), calcium sensors such as calcineurin B-like (CBL) and CBL-interacting protein kinases (CIPK), phosphatases (mainly PP2C and DSP), transcription factors (AP2-domain containing or ERF, WRKY), transporters and channels proteins (K+, Ca2+ and NO3- channels/transporters), small GTPases, and Armadillo domain containing proteins in both Arabidopsis and rice.
Prof. Pandey published 73 research articles in the reputed international peer-reviewed journals such as The Plant Cell, PNAS, JBC, Plant Journal, Plant Physiology, Cell Research, Molecular Plants, DNA Research, BMC Genomic, PLoS One, European Journal of Biochemistry, Plant Science, Current Genomics, FEBS Journal, Fronteir in Plant Sciences, Scientific Reports, Crtical Reviews in Biotechnology, Cell Calcium, Plant Cell & Enviroment, Journal of Experimental Botany, Land degradation and Development and others. Some of his seminal research work in the field of development of abiotic stress tolerance has been patented in USA. Moreover, Prof. Pandey has edited 8 books/volumes with reputed international publishers such as Sptinger, Wiley-Blackwell, Bentham publisher and others. He has presented a large number of invited talks at national and international research institutes and universities. He has been awarded with Far Eastern Regional Research Organization (FERRO) fellowship to work at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC), United States Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD (1998). Later, he was awarded with Indian National Science Academy (INSA)-Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) bilateral exchange visiting scientist fellowship in 2011. Also Department of Biotechnology (DBT), India has awarded him DBT-CREST Award in 2011-2012 to visit at Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California at Berkeley, California, USA as Visiting Professor. Prof. Pandey has also been awarded as Visiting Professor in Capital Normal University, Beijing and Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences (JAAS), Nanjing, China in year 2012 and 2015, respectively. In year 2015, DBT awarded him highly prestigious award in biological sciences, National Bioscience Award and he has been elected as Fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) in 2016. Subsequently in year 2017, Prof. Pandey has been awarded Foreign Expert Award and Visiting Professor by Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences (JAAS), Nanjing, China. He has been elected as Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), New Delhi in 2018.