Dr
G Ramakrishnan has left Agilent Technologies and joined Thermo Electron
Corporation as director, Asia Business Development for Scientific Instruments
Division of the company.
Dr Ramakrishnan who did his MSc and PhD in Organic Chemistry from Bombay University started his career as a research scientist at the ICI Research Center, Thane. Serving there for a couple of years he took up the challenging job of a marketing manager at Hinditron, Bombay to sell Varian NMR and Finnigan Mass Spectrometers for the first time in India. Then he worked as general manager, Scientific and Medical Division of A&MS Kaki, in Saudi Arabia and manager, Forensic Science Laboratory at the Arab Security Studies and Training Center, Saudi Arabia. Before joining Agilent Technologies in India, he worked at Hewlett-Packard in Singapore as Asia Pacific, business development manager for Mass Spectrometry.
Agilent appoints Sanjeev Dhar as country
manager, LSCA group
Agilent
Technologies have appointed Sanjeev Dhar as the country manager for the Life
Sciences and Chemical Analysis (LSCA) group. Dhar will be based at the Agilent
office in New Delhi. He joined Agilent in 1996 as marketing manager and has ever
since played a key role in developing the strategic plans for the Agilent LSCA
group. Sanjeev assumed the role of district support manager when the group
expanded its installed base.
Prior to joining Agilent, Sanjeev was the national sales manager for Waters India, where he focused on the pharmaceutical market. He also held sales and marketing management positions in SICO, an Indian distributor for laboratory instrumentation before joining Waters.
Kare is IDMA president
Suresh
G Kare, chairman and managing director of Indoco Remedies Ltd,. has taken over
as the President of Indian Drugs Manufacturers' Association (IDMA). He
replaces Yogin Majumdar, chairman of Bakul Aromatics and Chemicals Ltd who
completed his two years term on December 18, 2004. Besides the president, the
governing body of IDMA elected vice presidents for the four regions as members
of the committee.
The vice presidents for the four regions in the new committee are Premchand C Godha, managing director, IPCA Laboratories Ltd (Western region); Deepnath Roy Chowdhury, managing director, Strassenburg Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (Eastern Region); N R Munjal, managing director of Ind-Swift Laboratories Ltd (Northern region) and S V Verramani, chairman and managing director of Fourrts (India) Laboratories Pvt. Ltd. (Southern Region).
National Coordinator for ISAAA
Bhagirath
Choudhary, a trained scientist and biotechnology management expert, has recently
joined as National Coordinator, International Service for the Acquisition of
Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) South Asia Office based in ICRISAT, New Delhi.
Before joining ISAAA, Choudhary worked as team leader of the biotechnology
division at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI),
New Delhi. He has also worked as fellow scientist in the Council of Scientific
and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi for about three years.
Indrajit Banerjee joins Lupin
as President-Finance & Planning
Lupin Ltd announced the joining of Indrajit Banerjee as president, finance and
planning. Indrajit is a chartered accountant with over two decades of experience
in companies like Indal and Lucent Technologies. During his earlier stint at
Lupin, he was head of finance. "These are exciting times for Lupin and
given his experience of working in large corporations, I am sure that Indrajit
Banerjee will play a key role in Lupin's future plans," Dr Kamal Sharma,
managing director, Lupin Ltd said.
|
Biotech innovators Nine Indians were among those named to the 2004 list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Technology Review. Known as the TR100, the annual list of 100 individuals under age 35 is determined by the editors of Technology Review and an elite panel of judges. The young innovators were selected for their substantial contributions in developing new technologies that promise to have a profound worldwide impact on industries such as biotechnology and medicine, computing and nanotechnology and telecommunications. The TR 100 list reaffirms that human values and aspirations make ideal bedfellows when joined with a dedication to bleeding-edge scientific research. A closer look at three of these nine Indians who have done themselves and their organizations proud in the field of biotechnology: Ravi Kane, Assistant professor
of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute In 2003 Kane received a two-year, $150,000 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health, to pursue research into this HIV treatment. Kane was also among a group of Rensselaer researchers who, in the March 23, 2004 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported the discovery of a simple method for rapidly creating cellular carbon nanotube structures of different shapes. To produce macroscopic objects from nanoscale materials on a commercial scale, manufacturers are looking for such techniques that make it possible to work with materials several billionths of a meter in size. Prof Kane modest reaction on being honoured by the MIT Technology Review was, "It's a great honour." Ananth Natarajan, chief executive officer,
Infinite Biomedical Technologies
These innovations hold the promise to solve pressing clinical problems in the fields of cardiac, gynecologic and neurocritical care. "I am honored to be included on the TR100 list of young innovators in technology," said Dr Natarajan. "Such recognition affirms that IBT is bridging the chasm between engineering and medicine with technology that can help save and improve lives." Dr Natarajan co-founded Infinite Biomedical Technologies in 1997. In 1990, at the age of 18, he graduated (with Distinction) from Duke University with a double major in biomedical engineering and electrical engineering. He then earned a master's degree in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a medical degree from the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. Dr Smruti Vidwans, Postdoctoral fellow,
University of California, San Fransisco |
Ravi
Kane's primary research focus is on investigating and solving problems
in medicine and biology by the molecular engineering of materials and
surfaces. He works in the areas of biotechnology, advanced materials,
nanotechnology, and polymers. Earlier in 2004, Kane was awarded $2.1
million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to develop an
antidote to counteract the potentially deadly anthrax toxin in humans who
have been exposed to the bacteria's spores. Kane is also working to
design new molecules that may one day fend off an HIV infection.
Bolstering the body's molecular defenses is a novel method that may lead
to highly effective treatments for HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS.
Dr
Smruti Vidwans is a molecular biologist by training, having trained at
Massachusetts Institute of Techonology and Univeristy of California, San
Francisco (UCSF). She is currently doing an academic postdoctoral
fellowship at UCSF to commercialize her findings towards discovering new
drugs against tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB) kills about 2-3 million
people each year and about a third of mankind is estimated to be a carrier
of this disease. The focus of Dr Vidwans research is to highlight the
importance of a two-pronged attack on TB: vaccines to prevent transmission
and drugs to eradicate TB from diseased and infected individuals. Dr
Vidwans received the honor for her pursuit of a new approach to developing
drugs against tuberculosis. No new drugs have been developed to treat TB
for decades, and current treatments are harsh and slow to work. A recent
breakthrough in the UCSF lab where she works identified a novel molecular
pathway critical to the virulence of the bacterium that causes
tuberculosis. She is now developing assays to monitor activity of this
pathway, which could eventually lead to new drugs.
