Santanu Bhattacharya

Santanu Bhattacharya
Santanu Bhattacharya
	Bhattacharya in 2015
Born	23 April 1958; West Bengal, India
Alma mater	Rajabazar Science College; University of Calcutta; Rutgers University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
Known for	Molecular design of natural and synthetic lipids and membranes for gene delivery and synthesis of novel peptides and for sequence-specific DNA recognition. Synthesis of unnatural amino acids, DNA binding small molecules, and biologically active natural products
Awards	1997 B. M. Birla Prize; 1999 MRSI Medal; 2002 N-BIOS Prize; 2003 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize; 2004 PU Bhagyatara National Award; 2004 CDRI Award; 2007 G. D. Birla Award; 2010 TWAS Prize; 2013 Ranbaxy Research Award;
	Scientific career
Fields	Bioorganic chemistry; Supramolecular chemistry;
Institutions	Indian Institute of Science; Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati;
Doctoral advisor	Robert A. Moss; Har Gobind Khorana;

Santanu Bhattacharya is an Indian chemist and chemical biologist and an honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore where upon his return from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, he joined as an Assistant Professor in 1991 and rose to the rank of a Professor in 2001. He is also an honorary fellow of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS Kolkata) where he served as the Director from 2015-2021. Since 2023, he is the Director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati (IISER-Tirupati). He is popular for his interdisciplinary work at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and materials science and introduced this style of investigation in India. His research on synthetic and natural lipids, gene delivery vehicles, natural and unnatural amino acids, oligopeptides, hydro- and organogels, bio-analytical sensors, molecular therapies design via G-quadruplex DNA binding, and biologically active natural product mimics is well known. He has been elected a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy New Delhi, The World Academy of Sciences Trieste, and the Indian Academy of Sciences Bangalore. In 2003, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Government of India's apex scientific research organization, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest Indian award in science, for his contributions to chemical sciences. He has also received the Department of Biotechnology's National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology (2002) and the UNESCO TWAS Prize (2010).