Sandhya Srikant Visweswariah is a scientist and academic at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. She is currently the Chairperson of the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics^[1] and the Co-chair of the Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering,^[2] Indian Institute of Science. She additionally holds the position of Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry,^[3] University of Bergen,^[4] Norway. Her research involves the investigation of the mechanism of signal transduction via cyclic nucleotides, phosphodiesterases and novel cyclases in bacteria.^[5] Most recently, she was awarded a Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges Explorations Grant^[6] for her proposal entitled "A Small Animal Model of ETEC-Mediated Diarrhea".^[7][8]

Education

Visweswariah completed her Bachelor of Science in 1977 at Osmania University,^[9] Hyderabad, majoring in Botany, Chemistry and Zoology. She then obtained a Master of Science degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1980. She proceeded to enrol at the PhD programme at the Department of Biochemistry,^[10] Indian Institute of Science and was awarded her doctorate in 1987.^[11]

Career

Visweswariah started her career as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Astra Research Centre, Bangalore in 1987-1988. After a year at the Astra Research Centre, she was promoted to a scientist position at the same organization, where she stayed on until 1993. In 1993, she was appointed as Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics,^[12] Indian Institute of Science, where she has held a position since, being promoted to Associate Professor in 1995 and then to Professor in 2005.^[13] She is currently the Chairperson of the Department of Molecular Reproduction, Development and Genetics,^[12] Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Co-chair of the Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering,^[2] Indian Institute of Science. Over the course of 23 years as faculty at the Indian Institute of Science, Visweswariah has mentored more than 25 PhD students.^[14]

Membership in professional bodies and editorial boards

Visweswariah is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy^[15] and the Indian Academy of Sciences: Third World Organisation for women in science.^[16] She is a life member of the Society of Biological Chemists (India),^[17][18] Indian Society of Cell Biology^[19] (1995–present) and the Society of Research in Reproduction, India (1994–present). Additionally, she is a member of Guha Research Council, India (1997–present), the Alliance for Cell Signalling^[20] (1997–present), the TB Structural Genomics Consortium, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology^[21] (ASBMB), and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).^[22]

She serves as the Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Receptors and Signal Transduction, Tuberculosis,^[23] Physiology Reports,^[24] FEMS Microbiological Letters^[25] and PeerJ and an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Cellular Endocrinology.^[26]

Awards and fellowships

• Gold Medal in Botany, B.Sc. 1978.
• Indian National Science Academy Medal for Young Scientists, 1988.^[27]
• Awarded a Short-Term Associateship by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India^[28] for a three-month visit to University of Missouri at Columbia, United States, 1998.
• Recipient of Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Short Term Fellowship (2002) to visit University of California, Berkeley in the laboratory of Prof. John Kuriyan.^[29][30]
• Awarded the Central Drug Research Institute^[31] Award for Excellence in Drug Research, 2005.^[32]
• Recipient of YT Thathachari Award 2009.^[33]
• Recipient of a Royal Society International Joint Project with Dr. Roger Buxton, National Institute for Medical Research, UK,^[34] London, 2008-2011.
• Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship,^[35] 2011-2012,^[36] spent at the lab of Dr. Sabine Ehrt,^[37] Weill Cornell Medical College,^[38] New York City, United States.
• AstraZeneca Research Chair Professor, Indian Institute of Science, August 2012 – 2015.
• JC Bose Fellow,^[39] 2013–present.
• Recipient of a Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges Explorations Grant,^[6] 2014.^[7]
• In 2018, she became the fellow of TWAS .^[40][41]

Publications

Visweswariah has 95 publications in peer-reviewed journals and 5 book chapters to her credit, with a total citation count of over 1600 and an h-index of 25. The full list of publications from the Visweswariah lab can be found on PubMed^[42][43] and ResearchGate.^[44][45] These are some of the selected publications of Visweswariah.^[46]

1. Samanta et al (2017) Mycobacterial phenolic glycolipid synthesis is regulated by cAMP-dependent lysine acylation of FadD22 Microbiology 163: 373-382
2. Sathyanarayana et al (2016) The Solvent-Exposed C-Terminus of the Cytolysin A Pore-Forming Toxin Directs Pore Formation and Channel Function in Membranes. Biochemistry 55: 5952-5961
3. Müller. T., Rasool, I., et al (2015) Congenital secretory diarrhoea caused by activating germline mutations in GUCY2C. Gut doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2015-309441
4. Basu et al (2014) Intestinal cell proliferation and senescence is regulated by receptor guanylyl cyclase C and p21 J. Biol. Chem. 289: 581-93
5. Fiskerstand, T., Arshad et al (2012) Familial Diarrhea Syndrome caused by an activating GUCY2C mutation. N. Engl. J. Med. 366: 1586-95

References