Science: Faces of the Millennium - Samir K.Brahmachari

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Dec 27, 1999

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Samir K. Brahmachari, 47
Biophysicist

GENE HACK MAN

Chiefs of government research labs are rarely young, not in India anyway. Some people manage a head start though. Like Brahmachari. He has already been director of the CSIR's Centre for Biochemical Technology in Delhi for three years now. "I realised that to do the things I want to do, I need to be at the top of an institute," he says. In fact, he was just 28 when he started his first lab when he worked at the IISC's molecular biophysics division.

Brahmachari lives in the hide-and-seek world of genes. One of his chief projects is figuring out the genes responsible for various diseases, specially neurological disorders like schizophrenia. He is also engaged with the massive international human genome project (HUGO). His baby now is population polymorphism. Put simply, it means there are patterns followed when diseases like asthma or psychiatric disorders are passed down generations, and if those patterns are studied and understood, managing those diseases would be that much simpler.

For some years he felt his age was a disadvantage, when people wouldn't listen to him saying he was too young. "Now it's an advantage, because time is on my side."

-Subhadra Menon

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