Prof. Ch. Venkata Ramana, Professor and Head, Department of Plant Sciences in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been awarded the prestigious lifetime achievement award namely the Janaki Ammal National Award; instituted after the late Prof. E.K. Janaki Ammal by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change, Govt. of India. This award has been given to Prof. Ramana in recognition of his contributions to bacterial taxonomy.
The award was given at the centenary function of Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) held at Kolkata on 1st July 2016 and received from Hon’ble Union Minister, Shri Prakash Javadekar. Prof. Ramana has also received the most prestigious Tata Innovation Fellowship of the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India for the year 2015-16 in recognition of outstanding research contributions in translation research. The fellowship is meant to honour and encourage scientists involved in translational research dedicated to finding solutions by innovative scientific knowledge and platform technologies. He is also among the top 5 publishers from India in Microbiology, according to a survey by Outlook group from SCOPUS, an online database of M/s Elsivier.
In recognition of his contribution to the bacterial taxonomy Prof. Ramana was elected as a member of “International Committee on the systematics of prokaryotes: Subcommittee on the taxonomy of phototrophic bacteria”. A large number of the newly discovered bacteria are being exploited for basic and applied research. At the present, Prof. Ramana’s group is well established for carrying out all aspects of modern bacterial taxonomy with international standards. His group has evolved descriptions of bacterial species from “polyphasic taxonomy” to “integrated taxonomy”. The group is presently working towards establishing a systematic survey in indexing and cataloguing “The Prokaryotes of India” with a view for translational research contemplating the needs of industries, agricultural, medical and environmental sectors of the society.