We are pleased to announce that Prof. Satyajit Mayor has signed on as an advisory member of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). DORA recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated. It is a global initiative encompassing all scholarly disciplines and the key stakeholders include funders, publishers, professional societies, institutions, and researchers.

We are proud to announce the election of Dr John Kuriyan (University of California, Berkeley, USA) to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine. The National Academy of Medicine is an independent organization of eminent professionals from diverse fields including health and medicine; the natural, social, and behavioural sciences; and beyond.

     The National Health Service and the Department for Health in UK set up a plan for “Action on Hearing Loss” in 2015, to address the growing problems of hearing loss which have significant economic, social and personal consequences. It is estimated that one in six people in the UK suffer from one or the other form of hearing loss and that amounts to nearly 11 million people!

The Bangalore Life Sciences Cluster (BLiSc) congratulates Kamaljit Bawa on being awarded the Linnean Medal for 2018!

The Linnean Medal is awarded every year by the Linnean Society of London to biologists as an expression of the Society’s esteem and appreciation of the awardees’ service to science.

     On 14 May 2018, Professor L S Shashidhara of IISER Pune was elected an EMBO Associate Member, joining the league of 61 other outstanding life scientists that were elected to its membership this year. Prof. Shashidhara is also a member of the Management Board at NCBS, Bangalore.

         The year 2017 came to a close with the Basser Center for BRCA naming Prof.

The National Academy of Sciences announced the election of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates, recognizing their notable and enduring achievements in original research on May 1, 2018.

Prof. Inder Verma is a pioneer in the field of creating virus-based gene therapy vectors and has made major contributions in the fields of cancer and immunology. His group uses lentiviruses - viruses to which the Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV belongs - to create gene transmitting vectors to generate mouse models of human cancer.

The National Centre for Biological Sciences extends a warm welcome to Raj Ladher, the newest faculty member to join the Centre. His expertise lies in the field of developmental genetics, specifically in understanding how developmental signals influence basic cellular mechanisms to control morphogenesis.

Prof. Madan Rao, who has been an adjunct professor with the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) for more than 15 years, has recently been appointed as a full-time faculty member at the Centre.