Presently, he is an honorary professor at the Molecular Biophysics Unit, IISc[2] and holds the Bhatnagar fellowship of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
[2] He is known for his work on lectin structure and interactions, orientation and dynamics of cell surface carbohydrate receptors and protein folding, diabetes, antimalarials and anti-cancer agents based on curcumin, flavonoids, etc.
[12] He discovered novel blood group and tumor antigen specific lectins[13] and made original contribution towards elucidation of the energetics and mechanism of protein-sugar recognition.
He genetically re-engineered carbohydrate specificities of lectins imparting T-antigen tumor recognizing ability to peanut agglutinin.
[14] He delineated the molecular basis of carbohydrate recognition by legume lectins[15][16][17][18][19] and demonstrated the novel C-H...O/N hydrogen bond in protein-sugar interactions.
[22][23][24] His studies showed that the monomers of legume lectins have the necessary structural features for carbohydrate recognition and that oligomerization imparts them with topology necessary for their biologic activities such as agglutination, mitogenesis, etc.
He has demonstrated the potential of common dietary components - curcumin and green tea catechins as anti-cancer and antimalarial agents.
[42] Surolia co-discovered the existence of the fatty acid synthesis pathway in Plasmodium and demonstrated its remarkable distinction from that of its human host.
His findings have been commercially exploited by a number of international companies such as Amersham-Pharmacia, Sigma Chemical Co., Pierce Corporation, Bangalore Genei, Datascope Corp., and Shantha Biotechniques Pvt.
Surolia is a member of: Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Trieste, Italy[49] and International Molecular Biologists Network.
He is an editorial board member of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (India) and the Indian Journal of Biotechnology.