Board of Directors
Satyajit "Jitu" Mayor was born in Baroda, India and received his M.Sc in Chemistry from IIT, Mumbai. He obtained his Ph.D. in Life Sciences from The Rockefeller University, New York, working in the Laboratory of Molecular Parasitology with Prof. George Cross where he studied the biosynthesis of GPI-anchors in the African sleeping sickness parasite, Trypanosoma brucei. He then moved to Department of Pathology at Columbia University, New York where he developed tools to study the trafficking of GPI-anchored proteins in mammalian cells using quantitative fluorescence microscopy.
In 1996, Mayor moved to the National Centre for Biological Sciences, (NCBS) Bangalore, India where he is now Professor in the area of Cellular Organization and Signaling. As an NCBS Director, he has taken a multi-disciplinary approach combining cell biology with physics and chemistry to study the organization and endocytic trafficking of transmembrane and lipid-anchored proteins in membranes of living cells.
Shrikumar Suryanarayan graduated in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras, and subsequently specialized in Biochemical Engineering from IIT Delhi in 1984. He then joined Biocon India to start their Research and Development Division. During the 23 plus years that he spent at Biocon, the company grew from a small company manufacturing industrial enzymes to a specialized Biopharmaceutical company with market capitalization in excess of a billion dollars.
He has overseen the development and commercialization of a number of enzyme and pharmaceutical process right from the laboratory and into production. He designed the initial Solid State fermentation plants for Biocon and then spearheaded the team that developed the Plafractor - a novel bioreactor. The Plafractor was granted a US patent in 2001 and the invention also received an award from the Department of Science and Technology of India. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, with research interests Bioprocess technology and bio-fuels. In addition, he is a visiting faculty at the Department for Molecular Medicine at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, with research interests in Diabetes and inflammation.
Prof. Ramaswamy S. has a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from the Indian Institute of Science. After working at the the Department of Molecular Biology, Biomedical Center, SLU, Uppsala, Sweden and at the Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA, he moved to Bangalore in 2009. He was one of the founding Deans of the Institute of Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine, where he was also a Senior Professor (2009-2019). He is one of the co-founders of C-CAMP. He was the first CEO of C-CAMP from 2009-2016. He continues to be in C-CAMP Board of Directors.
He is currently Professor of Biological Sciences; Professor, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Bindley Bioscience Centre at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA. He continues to hold an adjunct Professor’s position at the Department of Biochemistry, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa. He continues to work closely with several organizations in India, including start up companies, not-for profits as well as academic institutions. His research interests are in understanding biological function at atomic resolution.
Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed is the CEO and Director of C-CAMP. His initial training has been in neurosciences, where he received his PhD from Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany and followed it up by postdoctoral training at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). At the same time, he also underwent training in management for Biotech and Innovation from QB3 at UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. He has also completed a biotech management program for biotech executives at Wharton School of Management. In the Bay area, he served as a Management Consultant with QB3 New Biotech Venture Consulting and in an individual capacity, he also consulted for many biotech firms in the US.
Dr. Saiyed is an Adjunct Faculty at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and also Amrita Institute - School of Biotechnology. He also heads the Discovery to Innovation Accelerator program at C-CAMP. He is actively involved in promoting innovation in lifescience / healthcare by supporting translation of discoveries to application, entrepreneurship and technology development.
Twitter Handle - @taslimarif
Manoj Kumar is the Founder and Chairman of Social Alpha, an initiative to strengthen the science and technology start-up ecosystem in India with a focus on “lab to market” enablement. He serves as a senior advisor at Tata Trusts, where he is responsible for managing the innovation portfolio, promoting entrepreneurship and nurturing the academic/R&D relationships globally. He also manages the India Health Fund, which endeavours to strengthen India's ability to fight and eliminate the public health challenges of Tuberculosis and Malaria. Manoj is a founding trustee of Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS) and serves on the advisory and governing boards of a number of companies, non-profits and research institutions.
Prior to founding Social Alpha, he has been an entrepreneur as well as an early stage investor in a number of enterprise software start-ups and social innovation experiments. Manoj is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and lives in Bangalore, India.
CEO and Director
Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed is the CEO and Director of C-CAMP. His initial training has been in neurosciences, where he received his PhD from Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany and followed it up by postdoctoral training at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). At the same time, he also underwent training in management for Biotech and Innovation from QB3 at UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. He has also completed a biotech management program for biotech executives at Wharton School of Management. In the Bay area, he served as a Management Consultant with QB3 New Biotech Venture Consulting and in an individual capacity, he also consulted for many biotech firms in the US.
Dr. Saiyed is an Adjunct Faculty at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and also Amrita Institute - School of Biotechnology. He also heads the Discovery to Innovation Accelerator program at C-CAMP. He is actively involved in promoting innovation in lifescience / healthcare by supporting translation of discoveries to application, entrepreneurship and technology development.
Twitter Handle - @taslimarif
Program and Scientific Leads
Dr. Ashwitha Karkera is the Senior Incubation manager at C-CAMP. Her role involves developing and executing strategy for outreach, scouting, evaluating and onboarding of the deep science and innovative start-ups. She manages the day-to-day functioning of the incubator coordinating with the operations, funding, mentoring and other relevant team members. As a part of the incubation program, she is involved in efforts to build liaison with other bio incubators/universities for promotion of the bio incubation ecosystem. She has a Ph.D in Microbiology from University of Mysore for her studies on mechanism of abiotic stress tolerance in Pseudomonas spp. Earlier she was associated with NBAIR (ICAR) studying the biocontrol agents, natural enemies of crop pathogens and also lead the microbiology team at Pest Control India Pvt. Ltd (currently Gaiagen Biotechnologies) in developing new biological alternatives to ecologically toxic pesticides and eco-sensitive pest management solutions.
Dr. Bhavisha Wala is Program Lead - BIRAC Regional Entrepreneurship Centre (BREC) at C-CAMP. Her responsibilities include designing, strategic planning and managing Entrepreneurship Development Programmes like boot camps, hackathons, investor meets, workshops, mentoring & networking events and expanding networks of start-ups. She is also involved in basic and advanced entrepreneurship awareness programs for Life Sciences students PAN India. She has more than 13 years of experience across industrial research, academia and entrepreneurship development. She has a PhD in Plant Sciences from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Dr. Debarshini Chakraborty is Program Lead, Communications at C-CAMP. She creates, curates, communicates towards presenting C-CAMP's public face, especially but not limited to the website, digital media, social media, print and press relations. With more than 5 years experience in science communication, she liaises with all Programs-in-Charge for analyzing, capturing and conveying news from each of C-CAMP's verticals in both online and offline medium. In her earlier positions as Executive Assistant to the Director, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore and Scientific Co-ordinator, Science & Tech Department of French Embassy in India she has worked at the intersection of science and administration, communication and policy. She holds a PhD degree in Theoretical Soft Condensed Matter Physics from Indian Institute of Science with postdoctoral experience at NCBS, Bangalore and Institut Curie, Paris.
Dr Karthik Mahesh is currently the Associate Director of the 'MedTech Rapid Prototyping μFab' and also the Facility In-Charge of the 'Microfluidics and Microfabrication Facility'. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Biotechnology from M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT), Bangalore in 2013 and 2015 respectively. Later, he graduated with a Ph.D. from the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 2021. His thesis at IISc was on "Advances in Microfluidic Impedance Cytometry for the Electromechanical Characterization of Cells". After a short postdoctoral stint at Lund University, Sweden, he joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP). His primary areas of expertise are in microfluidics, microfabrication, medical devices, bioMEMS, and lab-on-a-chip.
Dr. Lakshmi Balasubramanian Dr. Lakshmi Balasubramanian is a Application Scientist - Biological Data Analysis at Centre for Cellular & Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP). She has more than 18 years of experience as a Computational Biologist in various fields such as Computational Chemistry, Bioinformatics and Bioimage informatics. She has completed her Ph.D in Bioinformatics at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru and Bharathidasan University, Trichy and Postdoctoral research in the field of Bio-Image analysis at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. She was Technology Consultant (Bio-Image Analysis) at various organisations like Fujifilm Wako Automation and Syngene International Limited and ventured her own sole-proprietary firm. With her versatile expertise, currently she is focusing to build the Data Analytics platform for life science researches starting from BioImage Analysis, Bioinformatics and High Throughput Data analysis in Biological Data. She believes that Data automation in the field of life sciences can elevate life science research and solutions. She is involved in training/workshops for Bio-Image Analysis at CCAMP.
Dr. Mitali Samaddar is Lead Science & Technology – C-CAMP Indigenization of Diagnostics Program (InDx). She leads the science and technology activities of the program in coordination with the InDx centers of excellence (CoEs) to enable and support the molecular diagnostics ecosystem and technologies for infectious diseases surveillance in India. With over three decades of academic and industry experience she brings in a rich experience in research, development, quality, regulatory and commercialization of biotherapeutics/biologics. She has had a long association with biopharmaceutical companies in various capacities and formerly served as director, biologics at USP (United States Pharmacopeia) India. Mitali is a Ph.D. in biological sciences from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and pursued post-doctoral research at Cambridge University, UK. She continued to be in Cambridge for another 3 years working in a spin-off company on novel technologies for drug discovery.
Dr. Mohammad Atif Alam in his current role as Programme Lead - Technology Platforms, Business Development & Projects, oversees the Technology Platform - Services & Development and Training vertical at C-CAMP. In addition Dr. Alam liaises with Industry for Outreach and Technology Licensing for the ‘Discovery to Innovation Accelerator’ program at C-CAMP. Prior to joining C-CAMP, he worked at Piramal Enterprises Limited (Life Sciences Research), Mumbai, where he was involved in in vitro and Pre-clinical studies for small molecule (NCE) based drug discovery. He holds a Ph. D. in Biological Sciences & Bioengineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India.
Dr. Neelanjana Janardan is the Program Lead, Early-Stage Entrepreneurship and Funding at Centre for Cellular & Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP). She currently manages early-stage entrepreneurship & funding opportunities for Life science & Biotech start-ups. As a part of the Entrepreneurship programme, she co-ordinates the investment program which includes grant and equity-based investment and and is also involved in other initiatives for promoting and supporting early-stage start-ups. She has an Integrated Masters-cum-Ph.D. degree in Structural Biology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and her doctoral work involved studying the structure and function of lipid metabolizing enzymes.
Dr.Niranjan Joshi is presently the Programme Lead - Digital Health & Innovation Deployment at C-CAMP. His primary responsibility includes designing and managing new projects and programmes, liaising with start-ups, building new partnerships, and developing strategic initiatives in the two thematic areas of digital health and innovation deployment. He has more than 14 years of experience across the innovation value chain ranging from academic research, translational R&D, application identification, technology development, innovation adoption and health system integration, entrepreneurship, start-up acceleration, and ecosystem development. His decade long work in India has helped him develop deep insights into health-tech innovation for resource constrained settings. He is a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, UK in the field of Medical Image Computing.
Dr. Paresh Patel is the Lead, Scientific Operation- ‘Discovery to Innovation Accelerator (DIA)’ at C-CAMP. In the current role, he leads the overall scientific operations and commercialization efforts for different deep science technologies developed at C-CAMP's Translation program. He also oversees the selection and implementation of new translational projects and inter-institutional collaborations under the ATRACT-Life program (Supported by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India) at C-CAMP. In addition, he is also involved in the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBSC) and manages the Bio-Safety facility at C-CAMP. He has more than 14 years of experience in academic and translational research, technology development, and generation of transfer of intellectual property. He has filed multiple patent from C-CAMP along with the team at DIA and its collaborators across country. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Virology from United Nation’s International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi.
Dr Shadab Ahmad is Senior Technology Scientist at the Mass Spectrometry Facility, C-CAMP. He received his Ph.D. degree in biotechnology from CSIR-IGIB, New Delhi in 2012. He worked as a scientist for Thermo Fisher Scientific BRIMS (Biomarkers Research Initiatives in Mass Spectrometry) Center, Cambridge, MA for development of various mass spectrometry workflows. He also worked as senior scientist for Optys Tech Corporation, USA. As part of the Optys team, he helped develop software applications for DIA-DDA based discovery workflow; PRM-SRM based targeted workflows; biopharma based drug development workflow as well as glycoprotemics workflows. He also worked for SCIEX, India as Omics and Biopharma Application Scientist. He has a very unique skill set in that he has expertise in proteomics, metabolomics, biopharma workflow development as well as software development lifecycle. He has over ten years of diversified experience in Mass Spectrometer and its application. His interests are to implicate mass spectrometry for the development of therapeutics as well as diagnostics and prognostic markers for human disease.
Shivakumar R. is an Intellectual Property Attorney with more than 16 years of experience in the IP industry. He holds a master's degree in biotechnology and a law degree from Bangalore University. He is also a qualified patent agent and a member of Karnataka State Bar council. Having worked with a renowned IP firm as a Partner and serving a company as the IP Head, he has handled diverse portfolios and represented diverse clientele across the globe. He has played an integral part in building strategies for managing IP for Individuals, Start-ups, Institutes/Universities, MSMEs and large sized companies. He has also been a regular speaker at various forums and has several publications to his credit. On work front, Mr. Shivakumar R has handled drafting and prosecution of patents in the areas of Life Sciences including biotechnology, microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, pharmaceuticals, bio-pharmaceuticals, medical diagnostics, therapeutics and nanotechnology. He also provides opinion on the validity and enforcement of patents, freedom to operate, infringement analysis and assisted clients with NBA matters, due diligence, technology transfer and licensing apart from managing patent portfolios.
Dr. Swati Subodh is the Programme Lead-Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) where she is instrumental in catalyzing programs and platforms to accelerate solutions for AMR in India, and beyond. Prior to this, she has been associated with the India Health Fund, a Tata Trusts initiative; and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in various capacities. A doctorate from the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), New Delhi, she was part of the team that worked on the Rotavirus vaccine. She is a scientist and healthcare professional in the field of Infectious Diseases with nearly 20 years of work experience in the field. Her work has spanned from basic science research in molecular biology and genomics aspects of the infecting pathogen to the identification and implementation of high potential innovations for better public health outcomes. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications, patent, presentations, and projects, both government and industry-supported, that she has led and has been closely associated with. Swati is also involved as a mentor in public health programs in various capacities. As a communicator, she has contributed articles/columns/features in international and national media; delivered invited talks, including twice as TEDx speaker, and keynote addresses at high-profile events to her credit. She is a founding member of two organizations, an Adjunct faculty at The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), and associated with a national-level committee overseeing projects in respiratory diseases. Swati believes in translational science research and development for application at the last mile for accessible and affordable healthcare. She firmly believes that knowledge & action should flow through the silos for productive public health outcomes.
Administration / Finance
Wg Cdr K F James (Retd.) is working as GM, Fin & Admn at C-Camp since 2011. He is a Post Graduate in Commerce from Calicut University and holds a PGDM from IIT, Kharagpur. He was Commissioned in the Indian Air Force, in Accounts Branch, in 1985 and since then, he worked at different units and formations of the Indian Air Force in various capacities including Jt. Director (Cost Analysis) at Air HQ (New Delhi). He took Pre - mature retirement from IAF in 2011 and joined C-Camp as GM, Fin & Admn.
ContactPublic Information Officer - pio@ccamp.res.in
Appellate Authority - Wg Cdr K F James (Retd.) james@ccamp.res.in