Indian biotechnologist Kailash Chander Bansal, elected to TWAS in 2025, is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, which he received at the International Conference on 'Biotech Innovations 2026: From Discovery to Translation', held in Jaipur from 26–28 March 2026. This recognition honours Bansal’s influence and impact in the field of plant biotechnology.
Bansal earned his PhD at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), India, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University (US) in 1992. He is currently an adjunct professor at the Centre for Crop and Food Innovation, Murdoch University, in Perth, Australia, and serves on the board of directors of the Global Plant Council, the board of trustees of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, and the research advisory committee of IARI, New Delhi.
Bansal’s research focuses on a key challenge in agriculture: producing enough food in a rapidly changing climate. He has integrated plant genetic resources, functional genomics, genetic engineering, and genome editing to make tangible contributions to national and global food security.
Among his key findings is the discovery of novel genes and genetic traits that confer resilience and stress-tolerance to climate change to wheat and chickpea, staple foods of major importance for many countries.
He played a visionary and key role in formulating the World Bank project on National Agricultural Higher Education, which has been implemented across 75 agricultural universities in the country, since 2017.
From 2021 to 2023, he served as elected secretary of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India, and from 2010 to 2016 as the director of the ICAR institute, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi. He also served as elected vice-chair (Asia) of the 15th Regular Session of the United Nations Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture from 2013 to 2015.
Cristina Serra