Prof. Appa Rao Podile has been appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) for a period of five years.
Prof. Appa Rao is a senior faculty member in the Department of Plant Sciences at UoH and is known for his contributions in the area of plant-microbe interactions in general and plant disease control using modern molecular approaches in particular. He has also been recently recognized as a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences for his research contributions in the area of plant sciences. Prof. Appa Rao was earlier elected as fellow of other prestigious academies including the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, New Delhi besides several other awards and honours. He has been awarded “Tata Innovation Fellowship” by the Department of Biotechnology and BSR One Time Grant by the University Grants Commission.
He is a member of scientific committees of Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology of Government of India.
Prof. Appa Rao’s Laboratory at UoH is supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and European Union under Framework Programme 7 and leads a group of 15 research students.
He is a Gold Medalist in MSc. and has a Ph.D. from Sardar Patel University. He is a Post Doctoral Fellow from the Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan and subsequently was a Visiting Scientist Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, and Department of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Munster, Germany. He has guided more than 17 PhD students. (INN)