M Shyam Lal, Associate Professor, Department of Animal Biology and Manjari Kiran, Assistant Professor, Department of Systems and Computational Biology, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH), have been awarded the prestigious Har Gobind Khorana Innovative Young Biotechnologist Fellowship (IYBF) for the year 2023-24 by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.
The DBT established the IYBF to recognise and support exceptional young scientists with innovative ideas and a passion for research in cutting-edge biotechnology fields. This fellowship provides both research grant support and cash award to the recipients. This year, the fellowship has been granted to nine scientists from across the nation.
Shyam Lal’s research focuses on leveraging advancements in nanotechnology and drug delivery for biomedical applications. His team is working to address challenges in treatments for varicose veins, wound healing and antibiotic resistance. They aim to create transdermal patches that deliver Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) through engineered nanocarriers and to explore the effects of upconversion nanoparticles in light-sensitive medications.
Manjari Kiran’s research group is dedicated to characterising various types of non-coding RNAs and understanding the role of RNA modifications in their regulation. The group is also involved in developing user-friendly, publicly available scientific tools for next-generation sequencing data analysis, bioinformatics prediction and computational characterisation of molecular players in human health and disease, according to a release.