J C Bose National Fellow
Project Co-ordinator, DBT Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Microbial Biology
M.B.B.S. (Christian Medical College, Vellore; University of Madras)
Ph.D. (University of Melbourne, Australia)

After completing his degree in medicine from the Christian Medical College, Vellore in 1979, Dr. Gowrishankar (born 1956) opted for a career in research and obtained his Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His Ph.D. training was in E. coli genetics and physiology, the general area in which he has continued his research ever since. Dr.Gowrishankar returned to India to join the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad as Scientist and Group Leader in January 1983. He remained there until May 2000 before joining as Staff Scientist in CDFD. From December 2005 to October 2015, Dr. Gowrishankar also served as Director of CDFD. After his superannuation in March 2016, he continues in the Laboratory of Bacterial Genetics as J C Bose National Fellow. The broad theme of Dr. Gowrishankar's research has been the use of genetic and molecular approaches to understand the mechanisms of (i) water-stress adaptation, (ii) spontaneous mutations, and (iii) interplay between replication-transcription-translation, in E. coli (see Research for details).

Dr. Gowrishankar is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA); Indian Academy of Sciences; Telangana Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Sciences, India; and the International Molecular Biology Network-Asia Pacific (A-IMBN). He has been the recipient of Young Scientist awards of INSA(1986), CSIR(1987) and Association of Microbiologists of India (1991), BM Birla Prize (1991), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1997), FICCI Award (1997), CSIR Technology prize (2000), New Millennium Medal of Indian Science Congress (2000), BREAD Role Model Award (2000), Andhra Pradesh Scientist Award (2003), Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Award (2005), and the Moselio Schaechter Award of the American Society for Microbiology (2012).

In 2013, Dr Gowrishankar was conferred the Padma Shri award by the Government of India