Seyed E. Hasnain

Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain is Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, a renowned academician, science policy advisor and institution builder based in Delhi, India.^[5]

Biography

Dr. Hasnain was born in Gaya, Bihar on Tuesday, 13 April 1954. He did his primary and secondary schooling from Gaya High School. Hasnain later obtained his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (1980) and worked at the University of Delhi before leaving for a National Cancer Institute postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta, Canada, where he was subsequently selected for the 'Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Fellow Award' to work at the Department of Medicine.

Hasnain then spent several years at the Texas A&M University, USA and returned to India in 1987 to work as a Staff Scientist at the National Institute of Immunology. Hasnain was appointed as the first director of Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in February 1999. He was appointed Vice-Chancellor of University of Hyderabad in December 2005.^[6] Professor Hasnain has since then contributed tremendously to the development of the university so much so that it recently attained the status of No. 1 university in India^[6][7]

Honours and awards

An Honorary Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, he has been nominated by the Prime Minister of India for the Membership of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (SAC-PM), the highest decision and policy making body for Science & Technology for the country. A former member of the Science and Engineering Research Coouncil (SERC) of the DST, he is the recipient of several national and international awards which include Dr Nityanand Endowment Lecture for Biomedical Research, Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Award, Goyal Award, G D Birla Award, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, Golden Jubilee Biotechnology Fellowship Award, Ranbaxy Research Award and several others.

Dr Hasnain is an elected Fellow of all the major Science Academies in the country, namely, Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences, Hyderabad, etc.

Dr Hasnain has recently become an Elected Fellow of the German Academy of Sciences – Leopoldina (Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina), a 350-year-old learned body in Germany. He is the first Indian to receive this honour. He was one of the youngest to be elected to the Fellowship of the prestigious Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), a Foreign Academy based in Trieste, Italy.

Dr Hasnain has been associated with the Editorial Boards of several peer reviewed journals in India and abroad. He has also been associated with the Boards of Governors/Scientific Advisory Committees/Academic Councils of several National Institutes. Some of these are Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Bose Institute, Calcutta, L V Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad, Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) and Cancer Research Institute (CRI), Mumbai, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, Sir Dorabji Tata Centre for Tropical Diseases, Bangalore, Centre for Molecular Medicine, JNU, New Delhi, Central JALMA Research Institute of Leprosy, Agra, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB), Kolkata, Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow, Centre for Human Genetics, IISc, Bangalore, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, Delhi, Indian Immunologicals Limited (IIL), Hyderabad.

Dr Hasnain is the Chairman of the Biotechnology Advisory Committee (Government of Andhra Pradesh) and Adviser to the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh on Biotech related issues. He is also the Member of Biotechnology Advisory Committees of Government of Jharkhand, Government of Gujarat and Government of Kerala.^[8]

Distinctions

• Robert Koch Fellow (Visiting Scientist Programme)^[6][9]
• Member, German Science Academy – Leopoldina^[10]
• Member, Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India^[11]
• Member, Scientific Advisory Council to the Union Cabinet – Govt. of India^[11]
• Recipient of the Padma Award from the President of India Padma Shri Awards (2000–2009)
• J. C. Bose National Fellow, University of Hyderabad^[12]
• Honorary Professor, JNCASR, Bangalore, India
• Founding Fellow and Adviser, ISOGEM^[13]
• Distinguished Professor at the Institute of Life Sciences^[14]
• Humboldt Research Award 2008 (The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany^[15])
• Dr. Nitya Ananda Endowment Lecture for Biomedical Research, INSA, 2005
• Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Award for Science & Technology, Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation for Science & Technology, 2004
• Goyal Award for Life Sciences, Kurukshetra University, 2004
• Dr. K.V. Rao Scientific Society Endowment Oration Award, Dr. K.V. Rao Scientific Society, 2002
• G.D. Birla Award for Scientific Research, K.K. Birla Foundation, 2001
• Indian Academy of Neurology-Oration, New Delhi, 2001
• Rustom Ranji Oration Award, Hyderabad Eye Foundation, 2001
• Platinum Jubilee Lecture Award, Indian Science Congress Association, Chennai, 1999
• Ranbaxy Research Award for Basic Medical Sciences, 1997
• Golden Jubilee Biotechnology Fellowship Award, Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, 1997
• NII Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement, 1995
• Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Biological Sciences, 1995
• Professor Uma Kant Sinha Memorial Award, Indian Science Congress Association, Baroda, Jan 1992
• NII Award for "Outstanding Basic Rearch of the Year," 1991
• The YMSA-88 Young Scientist Award for Biological Sciences, awarded jointly by the MAAS and TWAS (Trieste, Italy), 1990
• The Wood-Whelan Fellowship Award administered by the International Union of Biochemistry (IUB), 1989
• WHO Visiting Scientist, NERC Institute of Virology, Oxford, 1989
• IUB-Travel Award, International Congress of Biochemistry, Czechoslovakia, July 1988
• Fellow, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Alberta, Canada, 1983–85

Patents

• A method for enhancing foreign gene expression in baculovirus expression vector system. Inventors: Hasnain, S.E., Venkaiah, B. and Habib, S. Application # 112/DEL/97 filed on 15 January 1997.
• The AcMNPV baculovirus p35 gene protects against oxidative stress-induced apoptosis. Inventors: Hasnain, S.E., Sah, N.K., Kaur, T., Athar, M. and Pathak, N. Application # 2213/DEL/97 filed on 8 July 1997.
• Genetic markers for human meningioma. Inventors: Hasnain, S.E., Dil Afroze, Sinha, S., Sarkar, C. and Mohapatra. Application # 1564/DEL/98 filed on 6 July 1998.
• A method of an early identification of multi-drug resistance in mycobacterium tuberculosis and an appropriate therapy thereof. Inventors: Hasnain, S.E, Siddiqui, N., Pathak, N. and Katoch, V.M. Application # 426/MAS/2002 filed on 5 June 2002
• A method for enhancing foreign gene expression in baculovirus expression vector system. Inventors: Hasnain, S.E., Venkaiah, B. and Habib, S. US Patent # 5,965,393 (1999)
• Recombinant multivalent malarial vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum. Inventors: Altaf A. Lal, Ya Ping Shi and Hasnain, S.E. US Patent PCT application based in US # 60/097,703
• Recombinant multivalent malarial vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum. Inventors: Altaf A. Lal, Ya Ping Shi and Hasnain, S.E. Indian National phase of PCT/US99/18869
• Recombinant multivalent malarial vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum. Inventors: Altaf A. Lal, Ya Ping Shi and Hasnain, S.E. Japanese Patent Application # 2000-566433

References