About Us

Dr. Thomas holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He did his postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA prior to returning to India as the head of the Molecular Biology Group at SPIC Science Foundation in Chennai.

Dr. Thomas working in Prof J D Padayatty's laboratory at IISc, along with Dr H A Vasavada, was the first to clone a gene and perform DNA sequencing in India. Among his many notable achievements is a letter in Nature during his PhD on the organization and bidirectional transcription of H2A, H2B and H4 histone genes in rice. Dr. Thomas has also made extensive contributions to the field of plant biotechnology, including the development of insect resistant rice and tobacco, studying salt tolerance mechanisms in crops and useful technologies for genetic engineering of crop plants.

Further Dr. Thomas was instrumental in several successful grant applications during his academic tenure.He has been a member on several educational, technology and advisory boards and has mentored a large number of students for their PhD or other projects..

Dr. Ussuf is a PhD from Mumbai University and has done post doctoral research at the University of Texas, Houston, USA. He has over 25 years research experience at the Biotechnology Division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai followed by 12 years in the private sector.

He has made substantial contribution in the field of plant molecular biology and has several gene identifications to his credit. He was instrumental in developing a business program in biotechnology for Jai Research Foundation.

His expertise incluses Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Genetic Modification of Crop Plants, Biosafety aspects and Regulatory Affairs.

Somasekar (Sekar) Seshagiri leads SGRF’s scientific research activities and is the driving force behind the foundation’s educational outreach activities including conferences. He chairs SGRF’s Nextgen Genomics, Biology, Bioinformatics and Technologies (NGBT) international meeting

A resident of San Francisco Bay Area, Seshagiri is Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer for ModMab Therapeutics. Before that he spent 21 years at Genentech, most recently as Associate Director and Staff Scientist. During his tenure he established a state-of-the-art genomic laboratory, conducted research in cancer and cell signaling areas and participated in drug development.

His research work has been at the forefront of understanding underlying genetic changes in cancer genomes through systematic identification of somatic mutations in large number of cancer types and subtypes using next generation sequencing and other novel techniques. Seshagiri and team have applied computational methods and functional assays to understand the role of cancer specific mutations in oncogenic signaling leading to new target discovery for therapeutic intervention.

He has authored and co-authored over eighty articles in peer-reviewed journals including Science and Nature. Seshagiri holds a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture and a Master of Science in Biotechnology from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India. He is also a recipient of a Master of Science (Software Engineering) from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, US and a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, US. He did his postdoctoral work in Oncology and Bioinformatics at Genentech.

Dr. Schuster has over 15 years of experience setting up and operating centralized sequencing core labs at Max Plank Institute in Germany and Penn State in the US. He won the Science magazine's break through of the year award in 2006 (runner up) and 2008 (Top 10), was awarded the Time Magazine's top ten Scientific discoveries in 2008 and with W. Miller was among Time magazine's top 100 most influential people of 2009. He is currently Research Director and Professor at the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, Nanyang Technical University, Singapore.

Research in the Schuster Lab aims to map the genetic diversity of organisms at the genomic level and understanding the role and impact of such diversity in the environment. Using a combination of next-generation sequencing and ancient DNA techniques, the labis studying the natural history of a wide range of biological systems over extended periods of time. Because many of the species they investigate have generation times similar to our own, the study of specimens (historic or fossilized) dating back hundreds to tens of thousands of years enables us to develop relevant population genetics insights. These studies aim to better understand documented extinction events and perform comparative analysis of today’s remaining populations of endangered species. The studies in the laboratory involve organisms that include microbial organisms, plants, animals and humans. As many of the projects in the lab involve mixtures of DNA by virtue of samples tested, they have developed advanced experimental and bioinformatics approaches for assessing the species distribution within any given sample. These techniques have enabled metagenomic studies of both environmental and collection specimens at a high throughput level.

Dr. Reddy was the Founder Vice Chancellor of Yogi Vemana University from 2006-2011. He contributed significantly toward the overall development of the university that was set up in a drought prone poorly developed Kadapa area of Andra Pradesh, India. His stint as Vice Chancellor for two terms at the university witnessed significant infrastructure development along with the recruitment of highly qualified world class faculty members. Dr Reddy, prior to 2006, was a Professor at the University of Hyderabad, where he served for over three decades, rising through the ranks, guiding more than 50 students/scholars including Ph.D, students and postdoctoral fellows. His laboratory focused on genetics and genomics of drought tolerance in rice. The research work in his lab was funded through many international grants including those from Rockefeller Foundation, European Union, CGIAR organizations, besides national agencies such as Dept. of Biotechnology, UGC and ICAR. He has to his credit numerous research publications in national and international journals. Also, he has also served as reviewer for several top peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Reddy is an Indian Academy of Sciences Fellow. He co-chairs the “Genetic Engineering Approval Committee” of the Govt of India and is a member of “National Task Force on Agribiotechnology” and “Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation”setup by the Dept of Biotechnology, Government of India. He is also a member of the Executive Council of Benares Hindu University.

Sam Santhosh is an entrepreneur, with over 20 years experience in the software industry. Currently he is at the helm of affairs as CEO and promoter of SciGenom Labs Pvt Ltd. Sam sits on the board of a number of companies, both in the US and in India. In this role, he advises, guides and mentors companies to help them grow and realize their true potential.

Prior to this Sam was the CEO and Managing Director of California Software Limited (Calsoft) from 1992 - Feb 2012. He founded Calsoft in 1992 and under Sam's vision, Calsoft rapidly grew from a niche player in the Silicon Valley to a global player with over 1200 employees and presence in 8 countries. Sam took Calsoft Public and the company is listed in the Indian Stock Exchanges. Sam oversaw the growth of Calsoft in all key areas - Finance, Strategy, Customer acquisition and inorganic growth through eight acquisitions including companies in U.S, UK, Japan and India.

Krishnaraj Rajalingam is the head of the Molecular Signalling unit and a professor of cell biology at the University Medical Centre, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. Krishna received his Ph.D in molecular Cell biology from the Max Planck Institute for Infections Biology in Berlin, Germany. After a brief stint as a postdoc, he started off with his own lab at the Institute of Medical Radiology and Cell Research at the University of Würzburg. Krishna’s lab focuses on understanding the molecular signalling machinery that drives fundamental cellular processes like cell division, cell death, cell migration and differentiation. Krishna is the first south Asian ever to be selected under any discipline for the highly competitive Emmy Noether Program of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and has been heading an independent research group at Goethe University in Frankfurt. Since 2014, he holds a prestigious Heisenberg Professorship of the DFG for Cell Biology, at the Research Centre for Immunotherapy at JGU, Mainz. He has selected to be a PLUS3 fellow of the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation and more recently he became a fellow of the Gutenberg Research College. He serves as a reviewer of many international grant agencies, major scientific journals and a member of the editorial boards of Cell death and Disease and FEBS Journal. Krishna has authored numerous publications in major scientific journals and has been an ardent mentor of young scholars and an enthusiastic promoter of science and education.

Mallika Singh is an acknowledged expert in predictive modeling and translational cancer research. Mallika has initiated, established, and run elite preclinical drug development programs in biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies. She has published extensively on the predictive value of complex genetic mouse models and preclinical parallels with human clinical outcomes.

Balamani Amma is currently a board member of MedGenome Labs, Bangalore, SciGenom Labs, Cochin, AgriGenome Labs, Hyderabad, and MagGenome Technologies.
She has 28 years of rich experience in teaching and has been part of the management team of SciGenom group of laboratories since 2008. She is active in many social outreach efforts in Education and Healthcare.