Alok Bhattacharya is currently a professor of biology at Ashoka University. He was trained at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, National Cancer Institute, USA and Harvard Medical School, USA. He has an experience of nearly four decades in teaching and research. His scientific interest has been in the area of infectious diseases, biology of parasitic pathogens and genomics. He is credited with helping to set up one of the first teaching and research programs on Bioinformatics and Computation Biology in India. He has published over 200 research papers, review articles, and book chapters, some of these are in highly reputed Journals.
Lately, he has taken an active interest in the area of rare genetic disorders, particularly he is championing promotion of research for finding a cure for genetic disorders. He has also initiated research in this area and written a number of policy articles on rare diseases and drug discovery. He and his family along with friends have set up a charitable trust “World Without GNE-Myopathy (India) to achieve some of the goals.
He has been awarded many prestigious fellowships and awards, such as Robert McNamara Fellowship (World Bank), Rockefeller Biotechnology Career Development Award, SS Bhatnagar prize, and JC Bose Fellowship. He is also a fellow of Indian National Science Academy and Indian Academy of Sciences. He was one of the Vice Presidents of Indian National Science Academy. He participates as either chairperson or member, many committees of Government of India in the field of Science & Technology.