Professor K Vijay Raghavan was appointed Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India in March 2018.
Professor Raghavan served as the Secretary to the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. Prior to that, he was the Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the interim head of the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) a new autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT). Vijay Raghavan’s contributions in science, as developmental biologist, have been recognised widely. He was conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Edinburgh in 2011. He is a J C Bose Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology. He gave the J C Bose Memorial Lecture at the Royal Society in 2010, was awarded the inaugural Infosys Prize in Life Sciences 2009, and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India’s most prestigious science award, in 1998. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, the prestigious Institute’s highest honour and was recognized as one of its top 50 alumni ever in the Institute’s golden jubilee year. He is a fellow of The Indian National Science Academy and The Indian Academy of Sciences and served on the Council of the latter. Vijay Raghavan is the only Indian elected as an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation. In 2012 Vijay Raghavan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was awarded the ‘Padma-Shri’ in 2013 by the Government of India. He was elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2014. Professor Raghavan worked with the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur to develop their programme in biosciences and bioengineering. This has rapidly developed into a leading biology centre. He is also on the Board of Governors of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.
The event is hosted by Professor Stephen Toope, Vice Chancellor, University of Cambridge.
About S T Lee Public Policy Lectures:
The S T Lee Public Policy lectures were established in 2003 thanks to a benefaction from Seng Tee Lee, Singaporean business executive, philanthropist and Honarary Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. Each lecture considers aspects of scientific, medical or technological research and developments that are likely to have significant implications for public policy over the next decade.
