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Subhash Chandra Lakhotia studied from middle school level till PhD (1970) at Kolkata. He had short post-doctoral stints at Delhi University (1970-71); Institute of Animal Genetics, Edinburgh (1972-73); University of California, Irvine (1984-85); and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, (1985). He served Burdwan University as a Lecturer in Zoology (1971-72) from where he moved to Gujarat University (1972-76) as Lecturer and finally to Banaras Hindu University (BHU) as Reader (1976-85) where he continued as a Professor of Zoology from 1985 till 2011. After completing his term as BHU Emeritus Professor and DAE-Raja Ramanna Fellow, he worked at BHU as INSA Senior Scientist (2016-18). Currently he is continuing at BHU as Distinguished Professor (Lifetime) and SERB Distinguished Fellow.
Academic and Research Achievements: Lakhotia taught genetics, evolution, cell biology, microscopy, etc. at Burdwan University, Gujarat University at M. Sc. level; he continues to teach at Banaras Hindu University at B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph. D. levels. Lakhotia\'s doctoral research helped establish the then newly proposed model of hyperactive male-X to achieve dosage compensation in Drosophila and demonstrated its cellular autonomy. Later he showed, for the first time, that heterochromatin in Drosophila is active in transcription. He demonstrated the existence of two distinct replicon types in Drosophila cells and his study revealed tissue-specific induction of different heat shock genes after cell stress. His studies have elucidated essential functions of the non-coding hsr-omega gene of Drosophila in regulating the metabolism of hnRNPs and certain other RNA-binding proteins in normal and stressed cells through formation of omega speckles, a novel nuclear structure identified in his lab. Levels of nuclear transcripts of this gene have been shown to modulate the expanded poly-Q toxicity in fly models of human neurodegenerative diseases. His studies have also elucidated significant roles of the different Hsp60 genes in Drosophila in tracheal development, spermatogenesis and oogenesis and in regulating apoptosis. His major current research interests using Drosophila as the model organism are: cell stress related gene expression in development, long non-coding RNAs, stress proteins in tumour development, neurodegenerative disorders, Ayurvedic Biology. He has published more than 160 research papers, reviews and chapters in books. He has also written many articles relating to policies of science education, research publications and ethics in science. Lakhotia has mentored 32 Ph. D. students and 3 are currently working for their Ph D.
Other Contributions: Lakhotia with his colleagues established a new internationally renowned Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at BHU and setup a state-of-the-art Confocal Microscope Facility at the Department of Zoology. He has been actively involved in improving higher education in science through Science Education Panel of the Academy and through independent writings. He was also a Member of the working group of the National Knowledge Commission for attracting students to science and mathematics. He was also a member of ICSU Committee on Science Education (2010). Lakhotia served or continues to serve on several committees of different agencies like the CSIR, UGC, DAE, DST, DBT, etc. He was also actively associated with the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) as Member of its Executive Committee (2000-03) and later (2003-06) as its Vice-President. He was INSA Council Member (2004-05) and also served as Vice-President (2006 and 2015-2017); He also served as Convener of Panel for Science Education, INSA and Editor-in-Chief (2014-2018) of the Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy. He was one of the authors of the \"A policy statement in \"Dissemination and evaluation of research output in India\" issued by INSA in 2018.
Awards and Honours: Lakhotia is a recipient of many awards and honours that include: INSA Medal for Young Scientists (1975); Career Award in Sciences by UGC (1979); Fulbright Senior Scholar Grant, USA (1984-85); National Lecturer by UGC (1989); SS Bhatnagar Prize by CSIR (1989); JC Bose Award by UGC (1998); Sunder Lal Hora Medal by INSA (2002) Professor CNR Rao Education Foundation Award of Banaras Hindu University (2007); Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Fellowship by INSA (2009), DST-Ramanna fellowship (2009), 18th G. J. S. Rao Memorial Award Lecture 2011 by Dept. Biochemistry, IISc, Bangalore, DST-Ramanna Fellowship, DAE-Raja Ramanna Fellowship (2011-2015), BHU Emeritus Professorship (2011-2015) and DAE-Raja Ramanna fellowship (2011). He is a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1994) and National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad (2002). He was elected a Senior Fellow of the Cell Stress Society International in 2017. He has also delivered several award lectures including the 18th G. J. S. Rao Memorial Award Lecture of the [[Indian Institute of Science]] in 2011, the Arya Bhatta Medal lecture of the Indian National Science Academy (2018) and the IASTAM Zandu International (Indian Citizen) Award for Excellence in Field of Ayurveda and/or Natural Products Award 2019. Recently, he has also been awarded the SERB Distinguished Fellowship (2019) |
