INSA Senior Scientist @ANDC

Prof Rup Lal has joined the College as INSA Senior Fellow. He also holds several eminent positions:

  • Advisor, International Microbiology Literacy Initiative Resources- South Asian Center (IMiLI-SAC).
  • Senior Ambassador for India, Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS), The Netherlands
  • Senior Ambassador for India, International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME), The Netherlands
  • Adjunct Professor, Career Point University, Hamirpur, HP
  • Director (Honorary), PhiXgen Pvt. Ltd., Gurugram, Haryana.

Prof. Rup Lal is INSA Senior Scientist at Acharya Narendra Dev College, University of Delhi, New Delhi. He is the Fellow of Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi (FNA), Fellow of National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, India (FNASc), Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (FNAAS) and the Fellow, Academy of Microbiological Sciences (FAMSc), India

He started his career as a lecturer in Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi and served for nearly 13 years and became Professor of Molecular Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Delhi from where he superannuated on September 30, 2018. He has over 40 years longstanding experience inteaching, administration and research.

He has supervised nearly 75 Ph.D. thesis and mentored more than 120 M.Sc/M.Tech and under-graduate students.,Prof. Rup Lal specialized himself in the area of microbial diversity, genomics and metagenomics. He has extensively explored the molecular and genetic aspects of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) degradation, explored microbial diversity (published over more than 50 novel bacterial species),sequenced more than 30 bacterial genomes, carried out comparative genomics (more than5projects) and metagenome analysis (five metagenomes/microbiome). His research has led to the identification and functional characterization by using metagenomic approaches of microbial and viral communities at Manikaran hotsprings. His group has also explored microbial diversity and its role in the degradation of Hexacholorocyclohexane (HCH) at a polluted dumpsite located at Ummari village, Lucknow, India.His group has been invited to contribute five chapters to Bergey's Manual of Systematics of Archaea and Bacteria. He has also developed ananalogue of rifamycin by genetically manipulating the rifamycin biosynthetic gene cluster of an actinobacterium.

Prof. Lal was Editor-in-Chief of Indian Journal of Microbiology (2006-2013) and also serving as a member of the editorial board in various leading scientific journals like mSystems, Environmental Microbiology, Environmental Microbiology Reports, BMC Biotechnology, BMC Biochemistry, Microbial Biotechnology and many more.

He has over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals with 9359 ISI citations & h-index 49. He has delivered more than 300 lectures in the area of Biotechnology, Microbiology, Genomics, and Metagenomics at various national and international platforms.

Prof. Rup Lal was Chairman of Board of Research Studies (2008-2010), Head, Department of Zoology (2007-2010), Dean, Faculty of Science (2007-2010), Dean, Examination (2012-2016), Member of Executive Council and Academic Council and member of several national and international bodies. He is a member of various committees of DBT, DST, MOEFCC.

Professor Lal is the recipient of several prestigious fellowships including the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (Germany), DBT Overseas Fellowship and Indo-US-ASM Professorship in Microbiology. He was a visiting scientist at the University of Cambridge, University of Kaiserslautern (Germany), Oregon State University (USA), EPFL (Switzerland), University of Lausanne (Switzerland), EAWAG, Zurich (Switzerland), CSIRO, Canberra (Australia) and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig (Germany). He is the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award by Association of Microbiologists of India (2020), Endeavour executive fellowship (2018-2019), MoselioSchaechterDistinguished Service Award from American Society for Microbiology, Prof. S.R. Vyas Memorial Award and Prof. B.N. Johri Award on Microbial diversity by the Association of Microbiologists of India.

He was the Ambassador, American Society for Microbiology for the Indian Ocean Region (2012-2015) andthe President of Association of Microbiologists of India ( 2013). He was also a member of several national and international committees: a member of the review committee for the ASM-IUSSTF Indo-US Professorship in Microbiology. He was General Secretary (2011-2018) and is the present President of Indian Network for Soil Contamination Research. Prof. Rup Lal was the NASI Senior Scientist Platinum Jubilee fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute, IHC Complex, New Delhi From July 22, 2019 to July 21, 2022. He is also advisor to IMiLI-SAC ( International Microbial Literacy Initiative, South Asian , Center. He is also Director ( Honorary) , PhiXgen Pvt Ltd, Gurugram.

During the past more than a decade he is propagating microbial literacy among masses and even school children. Based on his scientific contribution to microbiology and his campaign to spread microbial literacy in India and abroad he is appointed as the ambassador of many renowned International Microbiology Societies like ISME (International Society for Microbial Ecology), The Netherlands and Federation of Microbiological Societies (FEMS) to the Indian Ocean Region.

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