Hemanta Kumar Majumder obtained his Ph.D. from the Bose Institute, Kolkata, in 1975. His primary research is on the molecular biology of Leishmania donovani, the causative agent of visceral leishmaniasis. His other areas of research includes (i) basic DNA enzymology of topoisomerases, (ii) development of antileishmanial compounds targeted to DNA topoisomerases, (iii) cell death of the parasites induced by DNA topoisomerases inhibitors, and (iv) development of kinetoplast DNA based PCR diagnostics. He is the recipient of the Raja Ramanna Fellowship (2012-2016); Sir J. C. Bose National fellowship (2010-2016). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru; National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad.

Jayant Udgaonkar, a biochemist and molecular biologist, obtained his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1986. He served as an honorary faculty member at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. In 2017, he joined as a Director of IISER, Pune. He developed methodologies for hydrogen exchange using NMR spectroscopy to explore the intermediates populating protein folding pathways. He demonstrated that not only a single dominant barrier slows down the protein folding, but several distributed small barriers can also influence the reaction. Dr. Udgaonkar was the elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1997 and; the Indian National Science Academy in 2002. He was the recipient of the SS Bhatnagar Award in 2000.

19-20 August, 2022

At Singapore