Balasubramanian Gopal (born 1970) is an Indian structural biologist, molecular biophysicist and a professor at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of the

Indian Institute of Science The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a Public university, public, Deemed university, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The ...

. He is known for his studies on cell wall synthesis in

Staphylococcus aureus ''Staphylococcus aureus'' is a Gram-positive spherically shaped bacterium, a member of the Bacillota, and is a usual member of the microbiota of the body, frequently found in the upper respiratory tract and on the skin. It is often posi ...

and is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India,

Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three b ...

and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He received the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology in 2010. The

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR; IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada'') is a research and development (R&D) organisation in India to promote scientific, industrial and economic growth. Headquarter ...

, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2015, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography

Balasubramnian Gopal, born on 31 August 1970, completed his master's degree at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and started his career as a biochemist by joining Torrent Pharmaceuticals at their

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ), also spelled Amdavad (), is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 ...

station. Later, he took a break from his job and joined the

(IISc) from where he secured a PhD. Moving to the UK, he did his post-doctoral studies in

crystallography Crystallography is the branch of science devoted to the study of molecular and crystalline structure and properties. The word ''crystallography'' is derived from the Ancient Greek word (; "clear ice, rock-crystal"), and (; "to write"). In J ...

at the

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR became part of the new F ...

. Returning to India, he joined the Molecular Biophysics Unit of IISc as a member of ''Lab 301'' where he and his colleagues are engaged in researches on ''structural and mechanistic aspects of membrane-associated proteins involved in inter-cell communication, transcriptional regulation and mediate antimicrobial resistance.'' Gopal is known to have done considerable research in molecular biophysics and has contributed to widening our understanding of the cell wall synthesis in

, a common

gram-positive In bacteriology, gram-positive bacteria are bacteria that give a positive result in the Gram stain test, which is traditionally used to quickly classify bacteria into two broad categories according to their type of cell wall. The Gram stain is ...

bacterium found in human respiratory tract and skin. He has published his research findings as articles in peer-reviewed journals and

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of Academic publishing, scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in Beta release, beta in November 2004, th ...

, an online article repository has listed 77 of them. He has delivered keynote addresses at several seminars including the ''Graduate Students' Meet 2007'' and the 2nd ''International Conference on Structural and Functional Genomics'' organised by Sastra university, Tanjore in August 2016.

Awards and honors

The Department of Biotechnology awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2010. The Indian Academy of Sciences elected him as its fellow in 2013, the same year as he was elected as a fellow by the National Academy of Sciences, India. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, by the

in 2015. The elected fellowship of the

reached him in 2016.

Selected bibliography

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Notes

References

External links