Prior to joining CSIR-CFTRI, Balaji Prakash, was a Professor, at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur for 14 years. His basic training in Structural biology was at IISc Bangalore (1991-96) and at Max-Planck Institute, Dortmund, Germany (1997- 2002). His work is well recognized among peers in the country and abroad, evident from the awards bestowed upon him.He is fascinated by the way Enzymes work: Using a combination of biochemistry, structural Biology and bioinformatics, his work at IIT Kanpur addressed catalytic mechanisms of important family of enzymes like GTPases, kinases and sugar nucleotidylyltransferases. At CFTRI, targeting these and other pathways, he develops novel peptides/molecules with potential applications and relevance to food science.
Structural Biology, Enzyme catalysis, Bioinformatics, X-ray crystallography, Structure-based Design of molecul
Awards.
2017 - Member, Editorial Board, Nature Scientific Reports
2013 – Elected, Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, India.
2011 – Elected Member, Guha Research Conference (GRC), India. • 2009 - DBT National Bioscience Award.
2004 - International Senior Research Fellow for Biomedical Science award by the Welcome Trust, U.K.
2006 - Invited participant at 2nd Indo-American Frontiers of Science Symposium in Irvine, California.