Lalji Singh

About Lalji Singh

Lalji Singh (born May 7, 1947) is an Indian molecular biologist. He currently serves as the Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU),the Chairman of Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi [1]and was the director of the centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) before that. His areas of his research interest involves molecular basis of sex determination, DNA fingerprinting, wildlife conservation, silkworm genome analysis, human genome and ancient DNA studies. He was awarded the Padma Shri by Government of India in 2004.

Work in CCMB

In June 1977, Singh came back to India and joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad as senior scientist.

Singh and his colleagues developed a probe called Bkm-derived probe for DNA fingerprinting which brought CCMB to limelight. Since then this probe is being extensively used for forensic investigation, paternity determination and seed stock verification. For the first time DNA fingerprinting evidence was presented in the court of law in India. The Kerala High Court upheld the verdict and since then this indigenous technique has been used as evidence in more than 300 cases including the assassination of the late Prime Minister of India Shri Rajiv Gandhi. This fetched him and his group the CSIR Technology Award for the year 1992 for biological sciences. The direct result of this work was the formation of an autonomous institution, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in 1995.

In 1998 he was appointed the Director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad. He was awarded for Dr.Nayudamma for the year of 2012, which will be presented to him by Nadendla Manohar speaker of Andhra Pradesh Assembly on Feb 16th at Tenali, Guntur District, AP

At present, Dr Lalji Singh is the Bhatnagar Fellow (CSIR) at CCMB, Hyderabad since August 2009 Except these things Dr singh has given a golden opportunity to the people from jaunpur. Instead of going directly to BHU they can go to Rahul mahavidyalaya Kalwari if they feel any serious problem regarding their health, because Doctors from BHU use to come every sunday at this vidyalaya to treat the people. To the some extend we can say that patients get same facility here as they get in BHU because of Dr. Singh only.