Amitabha Chattopadhyay obtained his Ph.D. from the state university of New York, USA, in 1987. His primary research was on monitoring organization, dynamics, and function in biological membranes in healthy and diseased conditions. He showed that membrane cholesterol is essential for the role of the serotonin1A receptor, whose activity is impaired in pathogenic conditions such as the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome. His group developed innovative techniques using fluorescence spectroscopy for monitoring solvent relaxation in membranes and membrane mimetic media. He was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, in 1998, and the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru, in 1999. He was the recipient of the Sreenivasaya Memorial Award for the Society of Biological Chemists in 2000; The S S Bhatnagar Award in 2001.

Sandeep Verma, a chemical biologist, obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, in 1994. His research interest includes ordered peptide assemblies, new antimicrobials, and small molecule stem cell interaction. His significant contribution was developing bio-inspired soft matter and protocols for using biological building blocks as diagnostic tools for diseases. He is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Sciences; senior fellow of the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, Germany. He was awarded the Silver Medal of the Chemical Research Society of India in 2017. He received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 2010.

27-28 August, 2022

At ACTREC, Tata Memorial Centre, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai