Rajeev Varshney, Principal Scientist is serving ICRISAT as a Research Program Director, Grain Legumes (RPD-GL) and Director - Center of Excellence in Genomics (CEG) at ICRISAT. He is also Wintorp Research Professor at the University of Western Australia. In addition to serving ICRISAT, Rajeev, in his dual appointment also led Comparative and Applied Genomics program as a Theme Leader for CGIAR Generation Challenge Program based at CIMMYT in Mexico for six years. Before joining ICRISAT, he worked at Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Germany for five years. He has been awarded Ph.D. from CCS Meerut University.

Academic and Research Achievements:
Rajeev has a basic background in molecular genetics and possess more than 15 years research experience in international agriculture. He is internationally recognized for his contribution in sequencing genomes of seven crops namely pigeonpea, chickpea, peanut, pearl millet, sesame, mungbean and adzuki bean and development of molecular breeding products in chickpea, pigeonpea and peanut. Rajeev, a Highly Cited Researcher as per Thomson Reuters in both 2014 and 2015, has published >300 publications widley read and cited articles in well-respected and high impact factor journals including in Nature, Nature Biotech, Nature Commun, PNAS, etc. His h-index is 58 with >15098 citations including >1000 citations each for two papers.

Other Contributions:
Rajeev has been a frequent invited speaker in several conferences e.g. G-8 Conference on "Open Data for Agriculture", FAO conference on "Agricultural Biotechnologies", brainstorming session on digital agriculture chaired by Mr Bill Gates and Nature Genetics conference. Rajeev provides leadership to several organizations by serving member/chair for several committees, editorial boards, funding organizations and advisory boards. He has also organized many conferences in India and most of them were organized for the first time in Asia.

Awards and Honours:
Rajeev has recently won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award - Biological Sciences, the most coveted and prestigious award from Government of India. Rajeev is an Elected Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) as well as leading science academies of India including Indian National Science Academy (INSA), The National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India (NAAS), AP Akademi of Sciences (APAS) and Telangana State Akademi of Sciences (TSAS), India He is also the recipient of INSA-Young Scientist Medal; NASI-Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award; NAAS Associateship and CSSA-Young Crop Scientist Award. In addition to above, Rajeev has received several prestigious awards including Research Excellence India Citation Award 2015 by Thomson Reuters, Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters in 2014 and 2015; The Illumina Agricultural Greater Good Initiative Award by Illumina Inc. USA, NASI-Scopus Young Scientist Award by NASI and Elsevier, Plaque/Certificate of Appreciation from Department of Agriculture� Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR)-The Philippines, Nepal Agricultural Research Council- Nepal, Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences-Vietnam