Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan is Distinguished Professor and former Director of The National Centre for Biological Sciences. He is Secretary of Department of Biotechnology, India since 28 January 2013, replacing Maharaj Kishan Bhan. He was conferred the Padma Shri by the Govt. of India on 26 January 2013. He is also a recipient of the Infosys Prize in the life sciences category in 2009. He was born on February 3, 1954 in Chennai. Krishnaswamy Vijay Raghavan did his BTech (Chemical Engineering) and MTech degrees from IIT Kanpur, and PhD (Molecular Biology) from Bombay University while working at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Thereafter, he was Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, USA. He has been working as Professor in the area of Developmental Genetics at the National Centre of Biological Sciences (NCBS), TIFR. Presently, he is Senior Professor and Director of the NCBS.  

Professor K. VijayRaghavan is the Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, and Government of India. He is the former Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and was the interim head of The Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem). Dr.VijayRaghavan’s contributions in science, as developmental biologist, have been recognized widely. He has an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Edinburgh in 2011. He is a J. C. Bose Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology. He gave the J.C. Bose Memorial Lecture at the Royal Society in 2010, was awarded the inaugural Infosys Prize in Life Sciences 2009, The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India’s most prestigious science award, in 1998. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and was recognized as one of its top 50 alumni ever in the Institute’s golden jubilee year. He is a fellow of The Indian National Science Academy and The Indian Academy of Sciences and served on the Council of the latter.  VijayRaghavan is the only Indian elected as an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. In 2012 VijayRaghavan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.