Know Your AMI President (2013)

Abstract

Born in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, on the 27th September 1953, Prof. Lal received his primary education at the Government High School Bani, Himachal Pradesh, graduation from D.A.V College, Jalandhar, in 1973, M.Sc from Kurukshetra University, in 1975 and Ph.D. from University of Delhi, Delhi (1975–1980). His teaching career started as a lecturer in Zoology at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, in 1979. He was appointed as reader at the Department of Zoology, University of Delhi in 1992. In April 2000, he became professor in the same Department. He was the Head of the Department of Zoology (Nov 2007–Nov 2010) and Dean, Faculty of Science (Nov 2007–July, 2010), University of Delhi. He has also served as Chairman of Board of Research Studies, Member of Academic & Executive Council, University of Delhi (2007–2010) and Coordinator UGC, SAP programme (2007–2010). Currently, He is the Dean (Examinations), University of Delhi, Delhi. He was awarded Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Fellowship from July 1988 to August 1990 and worked at the University of Bielefeld, Gentechnologie/Mikrobiologie, Germany. He subsequently visited (under the AvH Fellowship) University of Bielefeld between, May 1995 to July 1995; June to July, 2004 and June to July, 2008. He has also been a visiting scientist at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge from February to May, 1998. He was awarded Department of Biotechnology short-term Overseas Associateship from May to Oct, 2000 to work at the Department of Genetics, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. He was also awarded Indo-US professorship for the year 2008–2009 by American Society for Microbiology (ASM) to conduct research at the Oregon State University in Corvallis, USA. He has been instrumental in running two very long and fruitful international collaboration under ISCB (between DU, IMTECH, EAWAG and EPFL) and IACB (between DU, IMTECH and CSIRO, Canberra). His primary research interests include microbial diversity at pesticide polluted sites, genetic and biochemistry of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) degradation and development of HCH bioremediation technology. Prof. Rup Lal is also interested in the evolution of lin genes and genetic manipulation of rifamycin producer Amycolatopsis mediterranei. His group has already sequenced genomes of Amycolatopsis mediterranei S699, Thermus sp. RL, Acinetobacter sp. HA and Sphingobium indicum B90A. Currently, he is exploring metagenomics diversity of the HCH dumpsite. He has nearly 128 publications in peer-reviewed journals attracting over 1812 ISI citations along with h-index 24. He also has a US patent to his credit. Prof. Rup Lal has supervised more than 40 Ph.D. students and currently has 8 Ph.D. students under his guidance. Many of his Ph.D. students are well settled and some of them are leaders in various capacities. He is a member of the Review Committee for the ASM-IUSSTF Indo-US Professorship in Microbiology (2009–2012). He will be taking over as American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Ambassador from July 2012 for the Indian Ocean Region. He is a President of the Association of Microbiologists of India (2013). Rup Lal is also Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of Microbiology (INJM), Associate Editor of BMC Biotechnology & BMC Biochemistry and member advisory board of OA- Nano-Bio-technology. He is the General Secretary of Indian Network for Soil Contamination & Research (INSCR). He is also the Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, New Delhi (FNA), Fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India (FNASc), Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (FNAAS) and Fellow of Association of Microbiologists of India (FAMI).