Evolving Landscape of Molecular Diagnostics

Dr. Suar is a PhD in Molecular Microbiology from University of Delhi and Postdoc at ETH Zurich from 2004-2007. In June 2007 he joined KIIT University and established the School of Biotechnology. During this short span of time, the School of Biotechnology became a centre of excellence, supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India.

Dr. Suar is involved in research related to interdisciplinary science with specialized focus on infection biology. His research group includes multidimensional researchers working on bacterial infection and development of vaccines. He is also involved in research related to nanobiotechnology focusing on development of nanomaterials for health application and understanding their toxicological aspects with different animal models.

He established KIIT Technology Business Incubator (KIIT-TBI) in 2009 as the CEO, nurturing 200+companies in the area of engineering, energy, biotechnology and allied areas. He has received several recognitions including the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) Professorship award in 2012 during a visit to UCLA, USA; GP Chatterjee memorial award during 102nd Indian Science Congress and the Future Young Technical Leaders by STARS Switzerland in 2010. He also attended the Global Entrepreneurship leadership Symposium at HAAS Business School, USA and visited UC Berkley. Dr. Prashant PhD, Research Scientist. He has published articles in international journals and co-authored a book chapter with Springer. He has more than 10 years of techno-managerial experience in diverse areas of translational sciences including the fields of molecular diagnostics and next generation sequencing. Prior to joining BCKIC, he worked at FIND, where he was instrumental in capacity building projects on COVID-19 diagnostics including driving creation of appropriate SOPs, online and onsite training programs, workshops along with networking with academia and industries for disseminating knowledge on the rapid developments on COVID-19 diagnosis. He was a Product Manager for the South Asia region where he accelerated adaptation of multiple molecular assays including for HIV, HBV, HCV, HPV and blood screening. In addition to molecular diagnostics, Prashant managed whole genome sequencing and clinical sequencing assays for academic research and clinical findings for oncology, drug resistance, inherited diseases and non-invasive prenatal testing. Namrata Misra PhD received a M.Sc. degree in Bioinformatics from IIT (BHU) Varanasi, India, and a Ph.D. degree in Biological Science from AcSIR - Academy of Scientific & Innovative Research, CSIR-IMMT. She also received National Post-Doctoral Fellowship from Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, KIIT University. She is also the Head Bio innovations at KIIT Technology Business Incubator, among other key positions. Her research focus is on study of vital metabolic pathways and in-depth sequence-structural analysis of underpinning enzymes and also vaccine development using computational approach. She has also developed several cutting-edge computations tools, databases and webservers. She has authored or coauthored more than 30 international journal publications, and book chapters. She is the principal Investigator of a grant examining the metabolic pathways of algae using system biology approach for biofuel production. She has received the prestigious Odisha Young Scientist Award-2019 by Science and Technology Department of Government of Odisha and also the Best Researcher Award for 2012 at CSIR-IMMT, Bhubaneswar. Dr. Misra has led a number of workshops and training programs on innovation and entrepreneurship across several Institutes. She regularly mentors to students, startups and many young academicians to facilitate the translation of research discovery from lab to market and product development in healthcare sector. She has also visited to University of Edinburgh -UK under the Training-SinnoLABs Managers program in 2018 under the EU Erasmus Mundus Program. Also, she was selected to attend the ENPRENDIA Training of trainers and management meeting in Santiago de Compostela, Spain in January 2020.