Krishna N. Ganesh
Adjunct Faculty
Chemistry
Biomolecular chemistry of nucleic acids, peptides, lipids; drug development, DNA diagnostics and nanotechnology
kn.ganesh@iiserpune.ac.in
Prof. Krishna N. Ganesh was the Founder Director and Professor of Chemistry at IISER Pune from its inception in July 2006 to October 2017. He then took on the role of the Director of IISER Tirupati between 2017 to 2023.
Krishna N. Ganesh (born 1953) obtained his BSc (1970) and MSc (1972) degrees in Chemistry from Bangalore University and later did his PhD (1976) in Chemistry at Delhi University (Guide: Prof. GBV Subramanian). He was awarded a Commonwealth Fellowship to pursue higher studies at University of Cambridge, U.K. which resulted in the award of a second PhD degree to him in 1980 (Guide: Prof. JKM Sanders).
Prof. Ganesh joined Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad in 1981 where he established a microsynthesis facility for oligonucleotide synthesis and started a research programme to investigate new motifs of DNA-protein interactions.
In 1987, he moved to CSIR's National Chemical Laboratory, Pune to establish a Bioorganic Chemistry research group. He became the Head of Organic Chemistry (Synthesis) Division in 1994. During his tenure at CSIR-NCL till 2006, he was involved in policy development; resource generation; and design, execution and evaluation of institutional research programmes in Organic Chemistry. He also served as a member of several important internal institutional committees of the laboratory such as Medical Committee (Chairman, 1991-1994), PhD Guide Recognition Committee, Employee Task Assignment Policy Committee, Member Secretary - NCL Research Council, Students Affairs Committee, etc. He led a team of CSIR-NCL scientists in the preparation of “road map” for Organic Chemistry at CSIR-NCL in 2005.
Research
During his stay at CSIR-NCL for 19 years, Prof. Ganesh established an internationally reputed school of research in therapeutic and diagnostic applications of oligonucleotide analogues, especially Peptide Nucleic Acids (PNA). He has also worked on the structural biology of collagen peptides and in the emerging area of DNA nanotechnology. His work has been well recognised internationally through invitations to lecture at prestigious scientific meetings such as Gordon Conferences, IUPAC Symposia, IRT in Nucleosides and Nucleotides, Pacifichem Meetings, etc. He has published around 150 research papers in internationally reputed journals and guided 23 students for their PhD degrees.