Prof MRS Rao: 21 January 1948 – 13 August 2023
Prof Manchanahalli Rangaswamy Satyanarayana (MRS) Rao was a former member of faculty at the Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
In 2010, he was awarded the fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri in the Science and Engineering category, by the Government of India.
Prof Rao completed his BSc and MSc from Bangalore University in 1966 and 1968 respectively, and his PhD from IISc in 1973. He worked as a Research Associate, Instructor and Assistant Professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, USA, before returning to IISc in 1978. At IISc, he served as the Chair of the Centre for Genetic Engineering, and later as the Chair of the Department of Biochemistry (1998-2003). He was also a visiting scientist at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, University of California at San Diego. He served as the President of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore, India (2003-2013).
Prof Rao is known for his pioneering contributions to research on chromatin biology. He has published 125 papers and guided 30 PhD students. His 1993 publication in Cell on colon cancer has been cited over 3,700 times.
Prof Rao has served as the chair or subject matter expert for several scientific councils and academies, such as DST, DBT, CSIR, ICMR, Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India; Indian National Science Academy and The World Academy of Sciences; as well as various science policy-making committees in Government of India organisations, institutions and universities. He was the chairperson for the Task Force on Human Genetics and Genome Analysis at DBT, India.
Apart from the Padma Shri, he has also received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (1988), the Dr BR Ambedkar Centenary Award from ICMR (2005), the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture award from the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the FICCI Award, the JC Bose Medal, the Rockefeller Foundation Biotechnology Fellowship, the Om Prakash Bhasin Award, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Medal Lecture Award (2008), the Ranbaxy Science Foundation Award for Basic Medical Sciences, the Sir M Visvesvaraya Senior Scientist State Award from the Government of Karnataka, and the Prof N Appaji Rao Best Mentor Award (2011) from IIScAA.
Prof Rao will be greatly missed by the Institute community.
