Samir Brahmachari is new chief of CSIR

Samir Brahmachari is new chief of CSIR

BS Reporter / New Delhi November 12, 2007

Eleven months after R A Mashelkar retired from the leadership of India's apex research body Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the government today appointed Samir K. Brahmachari, director, Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, as new CSIR chief.  Brahmachari will also head Deparment of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) as its secretary.

The appointment of Brahmachari, a staunch supporter of open source drug discovery models that can be utilised for common good, has come at a time when global initiatives for collaborative drug discovery models are being
chalked out under the leadership of World Health Organisation.

Brahmachari has taken over the new responsibility from T Ramasami, secretary, Department of Science and Technology (DST) who was given additional charge of CSIR for some months now. Prior to him, M K Bhan, secretary, Department of Biotechnology handled CSIR as an additional-in-charge.

Brahmachari, a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was earlier a Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Genetic Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, before joining as director, IGIB. He has pioneered functional genomics initiative in India and is successfully led the Indian genome Variation Consortium project and presently coordinating a national network project in