Shankar Balasubramanian
Sir Shankar Balasubramanian (born September 30, 1966 in Chennai ) is an Indo-British biochemist and professor at Cambridge University ( Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry ). He deals with the biochemistry of nucleic acids .
Balasubramanian came to England with his parents in 1967 and grew up in Runcorn . He graduated from Cambridge University (Fitzwilliam College). In 1992 he received his doctorate from Chris Abell with a dissertation on the synthesis of the enzyme chorismate synthase . He was a post-doctoral student with Steven J. Benkovic at Pennsylvania State University . From 1994 he was a lecturer in Cambridge, 2003 reader and from 2007 professor for chemical biology. In 2008 he became a Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. He is also a group leader at Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute .
He researches DNA and RNA structures such as G-quadruplexes and chemically modified bases in DNA. A widespread, inexpensive DNA sequencing method (Solexa-Illumina sequencing, today commercialized by the Illumina company ) comes from his laboratory and he researches the epigenetics of genetic material, commercialized by the Cambridge Epigenetix company.
Shankar Balasubramanian received the Glaxo-Wellcome Award in 1998, the Corday Morgan Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2002 and the Tetrahedron Prize in 2013 . He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2012 and has been a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences in Great Britain and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 2013 . In 2010 he was named Innovator of the Year by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. In 2017 Balasubramanian was raised to the nobility as a Knight Bachelor , and in 2018 he received the Royal Medal .
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Balasubramanian, Shankar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Indo-British biochemist and university professor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 30, 1966 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chennai |