 Dr. C. S. Prakash is a Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics at Tuskegee University (USA). He oversees the research on food crops of importance to developing countries and training of scientists and students in plant biotechnology. Dr. Prakash has also been actively involved in enhancing the societal awareness of food biotechnology issues around the world. He has earlier served on the USDA's Agricultural Biotechnology Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee for the Department of Biotechnology for the government of India.
Dr. Prakash's website www.agbioworld.org has become an important portal disseminating information and promoting discussion in agbiotech issues among stakeholders such as scientists, policy makers, activists and journalists. His newsletter AgBioView is widely recognized as a premier news outlet on agbiotech issues because of its broad focus on technical, societal and ethical issues. Dr. Prakash, has been successful in impacting decision makers, the media and consumers in creating awareness of agbiotech issues especially on technology development and biosafety issues. He has also been instrumental in catalyzing the scientific community in many countries to be more proactive in the biotechnology debate and has lectured at dozens of countries.
Dr. Prakash’s contribution to agricultural biotechnology outreach was recognized by the magazine Progressive Farmer who awarded him the ‘Man of the Year’ award ‘in service to Alabama Agriculture’. He was recently named as one of a dozen ‘pioneers, visionaries and innovators behind the progress and promise of plant biotechnology’ by the Council for Biotechnology Information. He was chosen by his peers as among the "100 Top Living Contributors to Biotechnology" (October 2005) http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/biotech-art/top100.html while the prestigious 'Nature' magazine readers' short listed him for "Who's who in biotech some of biotech's most remarkable and influential personalities from the past 10 years" (March 2006) http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060306/full/nbt0306-291a.html
Dr. Prakash has a bachelor's degree in agriculture and a masters in genetics from India, and obtained his Ph.D. in forestry/genetics from the Australian National University, Canberra. His research interests include studies on transgenic plants, gene expression, tissue culture and plant genomics. Dr. Prakash's group at TU has led the development of transgenic sweetpotato plants, identification of DNA markers in peanut and the development of a genetic map of cultivated peanut. Dr. Prakash serves on the scientific advisory board of American Council on Science and Health (NY), BioScience Policy Institute (New Zealand), Norman Bolaug Institute of Plant Sciences (UK), Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development, Lifeboat Foundation, Policy Network (UK) and Life Science Foundation India. He also serves on the editorial board of The Journal of New Seeds, Indian Journal of Biotechnology, Food Biotechnology, and the Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology. |
