Asis Datta

[1][2] He was the founding Director of the National Institute of Plant Genome Research and is credited with the discovery of genes that assist in extended preservation of fruits and vegetables.

[4] Datta, born on 2 February 1944,[5] secured a PhD from Calcutta University for his doctoral work done at Bose Institute.

[7] Returning to India in 1975, he joined Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) at its School of Life Sciences and rose to the rank of a professor in 1978.

He held several positions at JNU such as that of the dean from 1983 to 1985 and that of the rector from 1993 to 1996,[6] eventually becoming the vice chancellor of the university in 1996 and holding the post till 2002.

He was also a member of the Steering Committee of Biotechnology of the states of Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.

[7] He sat in the governing body of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the steering committee of the National Bioresource Board.

[7] He sits in the general bodies of National Institute of Technology, Silchar and the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, Chennai.

His researches on Candida albicans, a pathogenic variety of fungus which causes candidiasis, an infection to humans, have assisted in designing a drug to combat the disease.

[1] He has published several articles, documenting his researches, in peer reviewed journals and Google Scholar has listed 226 of them, with an h-index of 20 and i10-index of 35 (since 2010).