Name: Sung-il Woo

My Area of Interest: Molecular genetics, neuroscience,

My Favourite Quote: Live, Love, Learn, Give

I am a: Professor of Neuropsychiatry

Short Profile:

What are your future goals? Where do you see your research going?:
Neurodegenerative Dementia therapeutic solution,
Schizophrenia pathogenic mechanism elucidation and therapeutic solution

Technologies seem to changing faster than ever, how do you adapt to that? What are the current technologies you are using?:
Stem cell tech.
Gene therapy
Neuroimaging
Pharmacogenomics

In the broader picture, where do you see the application for your cutting-edge research?:
Neurodegenerative Dementia therapeutic solution,
Schizophrenia pathogenic mechanism elucidation and therapeutic solution

Fast forward to 2020. What’s your vision of Genomics in 2020?:
It’s beyond my idea.

Name: Sharanagouda Patil

My Area of Interest: Animal viral genomics

My Favourite Quote: Be a smallest to learn the tallest

I am a: Scientist (Sr Scale) at PD_ADMAS, ICAR, Bangalore

Short Profile:

What are your future goals? Where do you see your research going?:
Presntly, I am working on Classical swine fever (CSF) which is categorised as “List A” disease by Office International des Epizooties (OIE). Indian has 14 millions of domestic pigs and there is huge demand for pork both within and outside country. CSF causes catstrophic effects causing enormous mortality leading to great loss to pig farmers mostly held by socially and economically weaker sections of the society. CSF is caused by Classical swine fever virus (CSFV)which belongs to Flaviviridae. Presently pigs are vaccinated using lapinised vaccine and there is no cell culture adapted vaccine. My future target is to go for designing of cell culture adpted vaccine and development of marker vaccine which can differentiate infected and vaccinated animals thereby derive control strategies for CSF making both animal and human life happier.

Technologies seem to changing faster than ever, how do you adapt to that? What are the current technologies you are using?:
Small is beautiful and we have a small set up having all recent equipments and we have plans to buy microarray systems, confocal microscopy, flowcytometry in order to study various host-cell interactions. Yes one need to have knowledge of the cutting edge technologies to arrive at conclusions which are of international standards. Of course outsourcing works out be economical in certain circumstances.

In the broader picture, where do you see the application for your cutting-edge research?:
We conduct both basic and applied research activities. In veterinary research, end users are farmers having dairy as a supplement to the thier agricultural farming and even the our Finance minister has a opinion of rearing livestock would as an annex to the land farming would be of more lucrative. Therefore the outcome of basic and applied reaearch activities conducted should help the farmers to alleviate the proverty and make a sustainable life for them.

Fast forward to 2020. What’s your vision of Genomics in 2020?:
Viral genomic diversity: India has a vast viral diversity and many unknown viruses and thier genomes circulationg in the environment are either directly/ indirectly beneficial in one or other way to the nature and humankind. Many viruses are to be understood in detail with respect to thier genes/genomics. To begin with, full genome sequencing of some of zoonotic viruses may be taken up. I am already at it of full genome sequencing of wild type Classical swine fever virus.

Name: Jacques Daniel

My Area of Interest: Functioning of macromolecular networks in the yeast model eukaryote; early stages of drug discovery and development; evolution of biological complexity

My Favourite Quote: Let educated intuition, not conformity, be our guide

I am a: Charge de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France)

Short Profile:

What are your future goals? Where do you see your research going?:
Building up automatic platforms for:
- The systematic study of cell’s macromolecular functional interactions
- Drug lead discovery targeted at any specific protein.
Theoretical research: the building up of cellular and organismal machines during evolution

Technologies seem to changing faster than ever, how do you adapt to that? What are the current technologies you are using?:
Large-scale systems-biology approach (i.e. fitness-based interferential genetics and derivative) for deciphering the functional interactions occurring between the macromolecular components of a eukaryotic cell.

In the broader picture, where do you see the application for your cutting-edge research?:
- Toward the complete mapping and understanding of a eukaryotic cell’s functioning; application to the core functioning of mammalian cells; predictions for incisive therapeutic interventions, for example in various out-of-control cell processes correlated with specific diseases.
- Drug lead compound research targeted at specific proteins.

Fast forward to 2020. What’s your vision of Genomics in 2020?:
Predictive cell physiology by means of the complete mapping and understanding of macromolecular functional interactions then obtained, and of the use, in the cell context, of a whole spectrum of macromolecular-activity modifiers.
Studying how diseases at various stages of their development correlate with the state of the cell’s macromolecular networks.
Personalized genomics and cell physiology study aimed at disease’s prevention or cure.

Name: Mensah-Nyagan

My Area of Interest: Functional genomics, Cellular and molecular neuroscience, neurodegenerative diseases, neurosteroids, peripheral neuropathies, pain

My Favourite Quote: Science without conscience is the soul’s perdition. ~François Rabelais, 1572

I am a: Professor at University of Strasbourg, France.

Short Profile:

What are your future goals? Where do you see your research going?:
Make significant progress in the understanding of neurodegenerative mechanisms in order to supply industries with valuable results which can allow the development of new and efficient strategies against neurodegenerative diseases.

Technologies seem to changing faster than ever, how do you adapt to that? What are the current technologies you are using?:
To adapt to the fast change, I use to renew as much as possible research apparatus and technologies in my research group in order to have the most recent and efficient technologies available for our research program.
Real-Time qPCR, shRNA, siRNA, Confocal laser scanning microscopy, HPLC coupled with continuous flow scintillation detection, behavioral analyses in transgenic mice.

In the broader picture, where do you see the application for your cutting-edge research?:
Industries developing drugs against neurodegenerative diseases, peripheral neuropathies and neuropathic pain.

Fast forward to 2020. What’s your vision of Genomics in 2020?:
Genomics should be able to make a breakthrough towards the understanding and the characterization of environmental factors involved in the regulation of gene expression. This will be important to decipher mechanisms involved in diseases related to gene dysregulation.

Name: Sudhir K. Goel

My Area of Interest: Molecular Toxicology

My Favourite Quote: Bad times are not really bad they are poorly dressed opportunities.

I am a: Senior Scientist, at Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow.

Short Profile:

Question and Answers :

What are your future goals? Where do you see your research going?:
1.After working on Animal models for a long research career my present interests are totally focussed on toxicological research on population exposed to toxic metals and Carcinogenic solvents.
2. My future research will be on remedial purposes to decontaminate the drinking water using Molecular tools.

Technologies seem to changing faster than ever, how do you adapt to that? What are the current technologies you are using?:
I have already acted long back in this direction by adopting PCR and then Real time PCR based technologies in my lab about 4-5 years back as soon as they were being popular in the science, accordingly I am updating myself to adopt newer Molecular techniques, Transgenics by generating enough funding from various sources.

In the broader picture, where do you see the application for your cutting-edge research?:
Future is going to be having World war on water and Energy resources and my present focus on Petroleum products as well as newer energy sources along with decontamination of water seems to be a quite futuristic view.

Fast forward to 2020. What’s your vision of Genomics in 2020?:
What to talk of 2020 this Genomics will be the real tool in all of our daily life like Nanotechnology in current times to persist till at least 2050.