Sandeep Verma

Sandeep Verma (born 1966) is an Indian bioorganic chemist and a professor of the department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK).^[1] At IITK, he heads Sandeep Verma's Group and holds the Shri Deva Raj Endowed Chair.^[2] He is known for his studies on ordered peptide assemblies and metal mediated systems^[3] and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences^[4] and the National Academy of Sciences, India.^[5] The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2010, for his contributions to chemical sciences.^[6]

Biography

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Born on 24 June 1966 in Kanpur in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Sandeep Verma did his early schooling in Varanasi and completed his master's degree at Banaras Hindu University in 1989.^[7] Subsequently, he secured a PhD from University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago in 1944 and he did his post-doctoral work, first at Johns Hopkins Hospital and later at Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine.^[8] On his return to India in 1977, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur as a member of faculty^[9] where he heads of his own research group, Sandeep Verma's Group, and serves as the Shri Deva Raj Endowed Chair Professor of chemistry.^[10] He also serves as an adjunct professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal.^[11]

Legacy

Verma's researches may broadly be classified into three segments, Nucleobase Polymers, Metal-Nucleobase Interactions and Ordered Peptide Aggregates;^[12] and he is known to have worked on peptide/protein assemblies and soft matter.^[8] He is credited with with the synthesis of Enzyme mimics using metal mediated systems^[13] and his group is involved in developing bioinspired soft matter and protocols for using biological building blocks as diagnostic tools for diseases caused by protein aggregation.^[9] His researches have been documented by way of a number of peer-reviewed articles;^[14] the online article repository of the Indian Academy of Sciences has listed 94 of them.^[15] At his group, he hosts many research scholars and assists them in their doctoral and post-doctoral studies.^[16] He is also associated with three science journals, viz. Chemical Communications, Chemistry & Biology and Journal of Chemical Sciences, as a member of their editorial boards.^[2]

Awards and honors

Verma, who won Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund Award, P. N. Bhargava Medal and BHU Vice Chancellor's Gold Medal for academic excellence in master's degree examination in 1989 and the J. Watumull Endowed Award of the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993, received the Travel Grant Award of the American Chemical Society in 1993.^[17] He received the Career Award for Young Teachers of the All India Council for Technical Education in 1999 followed by the B. M. Birla Science Prize in 2004.^[18] The next year brought him the IUPAC Young Chemist Travel Grant Award as well as the the Bronze Medal of the Chemical Research Society of India.^[19] He received two awards in 2009, too, Rajib Goyal Young Scientist Prize and the Award for Excellence in Drug Research of the Central Drug Research Institute^[20] and the Outstanding Investigator Award of the Department of Atomic Energy in 2012.^[17] The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2010.^[21] A member of the Rho Chi Society, Verma was elected as a fellow by the National Academy of Sciences, India in 2010^[5] and by Indian Academy of Sciences in 2011.^[4] Besides the short-term faculty exchange fellowship (1996–97) and the DFG fellowship (1999) of the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, Alexander von Humboldt fellowship (2001), JWT Jones Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2004) and Swarnajayanthi fellowship of the Department of Science and Technology, he has received the research fellowship of the University of Illinois at Chicago (1989–94) and the post-doctoral fellowship of the National Institute of Health (1994–96).^[17] He has also delivered a number of award orations including the Professor R. C. Mehrotra Commemorative Lecture delivered at the centenary session of the Indian Science Congress in 2013.^[17]

See also

• Enzyme mimic

References