Dr Alok Bhattacharya – Chairman , ORDI Scientific Committee .
Alok Bhattacharya was trained at IIT Kanpur, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, National Cancer Institute, USA and Harvard Medical School, USA. He has contributed extensively in the area of infectious diseases, the biology of parasitic pathogens and genomics. He had initiated one of the first teaching and research programs on Bioinformatics and Computation Biology in India.
Alok has been involved in genome sequencing, developing DNA sequence analysis tools and techniques and finding patterns in DNA sequence apart from investigating basic biology of parasites. His current interest is rare genetic disorders and finding treatment for these diseases. He is championing promotion of research for finding a cure for genetic disorders. He has also initiated research in this area and written a number of policy articles on rare diseases and drug discovery. He and his family along with friends have set up a charitable trust “World Without GNE-Myopathy (India) to achieve some of the goals. He has also been helping different Government agencies in implementation of Science and Technology policies as a member/co-chair/chair of different committees.
For his vast contributions, he has been awarded many prestigious fellowships and awards, such as Robert McNamara Fellowship (World Bank), Rockefeller Biotechnology Career Development Award, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize, and JC Bose Fellowship. He is also a fellow of Indian National Science Academy and Indian Academy of Sciences. He was also a vice-president of INSA.
Dr. Deepthi Chug
Dr. Deepti Chugh is a neuroscientist with expertise in the field of epilepsy, neuroinflammation, and neuromuscular disorders. She received her doctorate in Neurobiology from Lund University, Sweden, with a focus on neuroinflammation and adult hippocampus neurogenesis in epilepsy. Later, as a postdoctoral scholar at Ohio State University, USA, she investigated the pathophysiology of neuromuscular disorders utilizing multiple electrophysiological approaches. She has more than a decade of experience in preclinical animal models of neurological disorders and has published in several peer-reviewed journals. Currently, she is employed as a research fellow at IIT Kanpur apart from her role as a scientific advisor at Eywa Neuro.
Dr. Sudheendra Rao N R
Dr Sudheendra Rao N R is a physician-scientist with more than 17 years of cumulative experience in basic and clinical research. He completed his MBBS from Mysore Medical College and worked with NGO-Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement to cater healthcare services to the marginalized population. He joined NGO-Viveka Girijana Kalyana Kendra as a PHC medical officer, to help Government of Karnataka-VGKK run primary healthcare centre at Gumbhalli. He then worked at neurology department, NIMHANS, Bangalore, as a non-course junior resident. Having witnessed some of the rare genetic disorders in his clinical practice and training at NIMHANS, he decided to understand the molecular aspects of genetic diseases and drug development cycle completely. That set him on a unique journey. He completed his PhD in Neuroscience from National Brain Research Centre, Gurgaon and presented his thesis in 2012, on a rare neurodegenerative epilepsy called Lafora disease. In 2013, he got an opportunity to pursue postdoctoral fellowship in cell and gene therapy for spinal cord injury at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami, USA. He came back to India in 2018 and worked at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. He joined a biotech company in Bangalore as a chief scientific officer and helped put together a team to make clinical grade mesenchymal stromal cells for cell therapy. Having travelled the entire length of drug development cycle from basic, pre-clinical and clinical grade product development, he came back a full circle to focus back on rare diseases and clinical trials. He has been associated with Organization of Rare Diseases India since 2016 and formally joined as Scientific Advisor (volunteer) in 2018. He joined IQVIA, Bangalore in 2021 as a medical data reviewer and he is working there as his full time job. He volunteers in his free time to ORDIndia to help create a robust rare disease research ecocystem for India.
