Prof Amitabh Joshi to initiate the SRM-AP Biology Seminar Series – 2021

The Department of Biological Sciences, SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh has taken an initiative to organize the SRM-AP Biology Seminar Series – 2021. During the series, prominent scientists in the field of Biology from India and abroad will deliver a lecture every month through the virtual platform. The lectures are designed to encompass various topics on modern Biology to inspire scientists, undergraduate and postgraduate students, PhD scholars, and faculty members.

Prof Amitabh Joshi, Professor and Chairman, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India, will be delivering the opening lecture of the series on February 27, 2021, at 11 AM. The erudite professor will be illuminating the audience on “Why evolution is central to both biology and our lives”. In this talk, Prof Joshi will address some of the misconceptions pertaining to evolution, and illustrate that evolutionary Biology is a very well-established and verified body of scientific knowledge. He will also demonstrate that an evolutionary perspective is not just central to Biology as a discipline, but also capable of addressing several unrelenting societal problems. Further, Prof Joshi will mention some of the significant Indian contributions to the development of evolutionary thinking over the past three to four decades.

Prof Joshi attained PhD in Genetics (1993) from Washington State University, Pullman. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Laurence D Mueller at the University of California, Irvine (1994-96). He has been a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Berlin, in 2001. Prof Joshi’s current research interests are in life-history evolution population dynamics, and he uses a combination of experimental approaches and theoretical work using computer simulations to carry out evolution studies of fruit flies. Also, he has worked on the evolution of extreme ecological specialization, and the evolutionary maintenance of sexual reproduction.

Prof Joshi has also served the editorial boards of Resonance, Journal of Genetics, Journal of Biosciences, International Journal of Evolutionary Biology, and Journal of Theoretical Biology. He is presently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Genetics. In addition, Prof Joshi is a Fellow of all the three national science academies of India. He has been awarded the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award (Biological Sciences) in 2009, and the Lakshmipat Singhania-IIM Lucknow Young Leader in Science and Technology (National Leadership Awards) in 2010. He is also a J C Bose National Fellow. Recently, a new ant species discovered from Kerala has been named after Prof Amitabh Joshi.

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