Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences
Professor of Biology, IISER Pune
Honorary Professor, Ashoka University.
Shashi did his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India and Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Shashi specializes in Genetics, Molecular Biology, Evolutionary biology, and cancer biology. He is known for his studies on how various organs are positioned precise locations in our body and the precise control mechanisms by which our organs grow to specific size. An outcome of his work has implications to understand cancer, which is a disease caused by the uncontrolled growth of body cells. For the past 7 years, he is working very closely with clinicians on ways to improve outcomes of cancer treatment.
Shashi is a SSB Prize Awardee, an elected fellow all three Science Academies of India, an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Prof Shashidhara has served in the past as Vice-President of Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and Secretary General of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). During 2019-2023, he served as President of IUBS.
Shashi has also been involved in the promotion of science and science education. He has facilitated training of more than 10,000 school and undergraduate teachers in India on inquiry-based teaching and learning. At IUBS, he is closely involved in policy research on global change and zoonosis. Shashi conceived and initiated the TROPICSU project of IUBS, which is an international project on Climate Change Education.
Department of Biology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Dean HBCSE Faculty & National Coordinator, NIUS
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education - TIFR
Prof. Savita Ladage, has done her Masters in Analytical chemistry and Ph. D. in Chemistry Education. Her primary research interests are chemistry lab education at undergraduate (UG) level and conceptual pitfalls in chemistry. She is involved with various Chemistry education research and developmental activities, and programmes associated with the same. She closely interacts with chemistry teachers, especially those teaching at UG level, to orient them about research based innovative teaching-learning practices. Prof. Savita Ladage has chemistry/chemistry education related publications in terms of papers in peer reviewed national and international journals, pedagogical articles, book chapters and books. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Journal of Chemical Education (JCE), an ACS publication. She has also served as Co-opted member of International Steering Chemistry(ISC) for International Chemistry Olympiads (IChOs) on several occasions.
At HBCSE, she has been associated with two major key impact programmes for more than two decades, namely, the Indian National Chemistry Olympiad (INChO) programme and National Initiative on Undergraduate Science (NIUS)programme in Chemistry. The former leads to selection of Indian teams for the IChOs whereas the latter conducts chemistry/chemistry education activities for motivated UG students and teachers teaching chemistry at UG level across India respectively.
For her contributions to the field of Chemistry education, Prof. Savita Ladage was awarded the Nyholm Prize for Education by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), UK, in the year 2023.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721 US
Vicente Talanquer is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the UA. His research focuses on undergraduate chemistry education. He has published over 150 peer reviewed and invited papers where he has explored the conceptual difficulties that students face when learning chemistry and the effect of different teaching strategies on student understanding. He has also investigated prospective science teachers’ reasoning and practices. Dr. Talanquer has applied the results of his educational research to the development of innovative curricula for undergraduate chemistry education.
He has received various awards during his academic career, including the James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry by American Chemical Society, and the Educational Research Award by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. In 2015, he was named Arizona Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation. In 2019, Dr. Talanquer received the Education Research Award from the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, and he has recently been awarded the 2021 ACS Award for Achievement in Research for the Teaching & Learning of Chemistry.
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