At present Dr. Tapas K Kundu, is the Director of CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India. He obtained 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. He joined JNCASR, Bangalore in 1999 and became full Professor in 2009. He was a visiting Professor of ENS De Lyon, France and National University of Singapore. Dr. Kundu has made significant 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 and also edited two books on Epigenetics. Several patent applications from the laboratory have been granted and some are under process, which includes a few 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, Government of India, the National Academy of Science, India- Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee Award, the Sir JC Bose National Fellowship from DST, the GD Birla award for scientific research. He is the fellow of three major national academies of India and served as an editorial board member of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). He was instrumental to establish the Asian Forum for Chromatin and Chromosome Biology and Chemical Biology Society, India (CBS I). At present he is the President of CBS I. Dr. Kundu is serving as a member of several scientific advisory committees of premier research institutes and funding agencies.
Dr. Chandrima Das is Associate Professor in Biophysics and Structural Genomics Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) Kolkata. Dr. Das obtained her Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India in 2007 with specialization in chromatin structural regulation by Nonhistone Chromatin Associated Protein (NCAP). She performed her post-doctoral research at University of Colorado Denver (2008-2010) and M D Anderson Cancer Center (2010-2012) on discovery and functional characterization of a novel human epigenetic mark, H3K56Ac. She was awarded Susan G. Komen Postdoctoral Fellowship for basic sciences in Breast Cancer Research (2009). In summer 2012, Dr. Das joined as a faculty in Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) and established the Chromatin Dynamics Laboratory. Her focus has been on the modulation of chromatin structure by selective epigenetic recognition by a class of proteins entitled chromatin reader/effector. She is trying to understand the diverse functions of this chromatin-binding transcription factors to dictate the on/off state of the underlying genes in different physiological conditions and pathological states like cancer, metabolic as well as infectious diseases. She has been awarded Ramalingaswami fellowship from Department of Biotechnology (2011-12), SwarnaJayanti Fellowship from Department of Science and Technology (2017-18) and S. Ramachandran - National Bioscience Award for Career Development - 2019, from Department of Biotechnology. She is an elected member of West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology (WAST), a Society that promotes basic and applied science and technology in the state of West Bengal, India. She is the Life Member of Indian Society of Cell Biology (ISCB), Indian Association for Cancer Research (IACR), Society of Biological Chemists (SBC), India, Chemical Biology Society (CBS), India and a Member of The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). Recently, she has been nominated as a member of The ACS Chemical Biology Early Career Board.
