Current Affairs - Places - Discussion

India's leading expert in DNA fingerprinting and diagnostics, 56-year-old, Shekhar C. Mande was appointed Director-General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He will serve as secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and head 38 labs of CSIR. He replaced biotechnologist Girish Sahni, who retired on 31 August. He is currently director at the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune. He is the vice-president of Vijnana Bharati, a widely-known science outreach organisation. He was also the 2005 biological sciences recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the apex science award in India, for his work in structural biology of proteins.