Prof. Venkatesan Sundaresan

(MSc2/PHY/1973)

Prof. Venkatesan Sundaresan, a recent recipient of the Wolf Prize in Agriculture and an elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, is a Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology & Plant Sciences at the University of California-Davis. He has made seminal contributions across various fields of plant biology. His research interests and expertise encompass embryo sac development, zygotic transition, pluripotency factors, and apomixis, and genomics of host-microbiome interactions.

After receiving his B.Sc in Physics from University of Pune, M.Sc in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, M.S in Physics from Carnegie-Mellon University, Ph.D in Biophysics at Harvard University, and postdoctoral research at Harvard and UC Berkeley, he was invited by James Watson to head a research group as an independent investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1996, he became the founding Director of the then-called Institute of Molecular Agrobiology in Singapore, which quickly became an internationally leading institute in the plant and microbial sciences.

During his tenure as a Professor at UC-Davis, he has also held appointments as Chair of the Department of Plant Biology, and as Program Director of the BREAD program, a collaboration between the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has served on the editorial boards of Genetics, Plant Reproduction, The Plant Cell and Trends in Plant Science. His lab generated the first library of sequenced gene insertion mutants, enabling rapid testing of gene function via reverse genetics, first in Arabidopsis, and then in rice. Their work includes host-microbiome interactions in roots, seeking to uncover how they promote plant growth and drought tolerance. Recently, his lab discovered the molecular mechanisms by which fertilized eggs in plants form embryos, and used these findings to make hybrid crops that can provide high yields in perpetuity, thus achieving a long-sought goal in agriculture. Through these studies, they aim to enhance crop resilience and productivity, contributing to sustainable agriculture and food security.

Honouring his stellar contributions in the fields of Functional Genomics, Plant Reproduction and Plant Microbiomes, IIT Kanpur confers upon Prof. Venkatesan Sundaresan the Distinguished Alumni Award 2025.