Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Mohali has got its permanent director after the gap of almost a year. Dr Jayaraman Gowrishankar will take charge of his office on Wednesday.
The ministry of human resource development (MHRD) had cleared the name of Gowrishankar last month only as the institute was running without a full-time director since January.
Gowrishankar has received his MBBS degree from the Christian Medical College in Vellore. He has done his PhD in bacterial genetics from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
He was a scientist and group leader at the centre for cellular and molecular biology in Hyderabad. In 2000, he was posted as the director of centre for DNA fingerprinting and diagnostics.
He was awarded Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honour, in 2013 for his contribution towards the field of science.
The institute was running under Siva Umapathy, the current director of NIPER (Bhopal), since February this year after he was given the officiating charge of the director.
Debi Prasad Sarkar, the ex-head of the biochemistry department at the University
of Delhi, had served as the director of IISER from 2017 till January 2019.