Honorary Professor: Sumantra Chattarji
Sumantra Chattarji has been made an Honorary Professor in the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine.
He is Professor of Neurobiology at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India.
He received his Master's degree in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
He then went on to undertake a PhD in Biophysics, under the supervision of Terry Sejnowski, at the Johns Hopkins University and Salk Institute.
After post-doctoral research at Yale University and MIT, he started his own laboratory in Bangalore in 1999.
His research has shown that prolonged stress leaves its mark by enhancing both the physiological and structural basis of synaptic connectivity in the amygdala, thereby triggering the emotional symptoms observed in stress-related psychiatric disorders.
His laboratory also studies synaptic defects and their reversal in Fragile X Syndrome, the leading identified cause of autism.
Professor Chattarji's collaborators include Professor Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University in New York and Professor Susumu Tonegawa at MIT.
He was awarded the International Senior Research Fellowship by the Wellcome Trust, UK, and the Vision 2008 Award by the Fragile X Research Foundation, US.
He is also the Director of the recently established Center for Brain Development and Repair at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Bangalore, a collaboration with the University of Edinburgh.