Professor K. Vijay Raghavan was appointed Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India in March 2018.

Professor Raghavan served as the Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. Prior to that, he was the Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the interim head of The Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) a new autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).  Vijay Raghavan’s contributions in science, as developmental biologist, have been recognized widely. He was conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Edinburgh in 2011. He is a J. C. Bose Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology. He gave the J.C. Bose Memorial Lecture at the Royal Society in 2010, was awarded the inaugural Infosys Prize in Life Sciences 2009, The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India’s most prestigious science award, in 1998. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, the prestigious Institute’s highest honour and was recognized as one of its top 50 alumni ever in the Institute’s golden jubilee year. He is a fellow of The Indian National Science Academy and The Indian Academy of Sciences and served on the Council of the latter. Vijay Raghavan is the only Indian elected as an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. In 2012 Vijay Raghavan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was awarded the ‘Padma-Shri’ in 2013, by the Government of India. He was elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2014.

Vijay Raghavan worked with the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur (http://www.iitk.ac.in/bsbe/)  to develop their programme in biosciences and bioengineering. This has rapidly developed into a leading biology centre. He also in on the academic advisory board for biology (http://www.iiserpune.ac.in/footer-links/Academic-Advisors)  of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune and on the RAP-SAC of the NII, Chair the Research Advisory Panel of the CSIR-IGIB. The HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus, led by Gerry Rubin has Vijay Raghavan on their science advisory board (http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/advisory.html ). Vijay Raghavan is also on the Board of Governors of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.