Lalji Singh

Professor (Dr.) Lalji Singh is the current Director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), located in Hyderabad, India. Apart from being the head of this institution, he is a respected and widely acclaimed Molecular Biologist in India. His areas of his research interest involves molecular basis of sex determination, DNA fingerprinting, wildlife conservation, silkworm genome analysis, human genome and ancient DNA studies.

Background
Dr. Singh obtained his Bachelors Degree in Sciences (B.Sc.) in 1964. He won the Banaras Hindu Gold Medal for standing first in order of merit in the M.Sc. Zoology examination of 1966, and was awarded Junior Research Fellowship(JRF) from the University Grants Commission (U.G.C) that year. He went on to receive a Senior Research Fellowship (SRF) from CSIR in 1972. He then went on to earn a Ph.D. in 1971 from the Banaras Hindu University for his work on "Evolution of karyotypes in snakes" in the area of Cytogenetics.

From 1970 to 1972, Dr. Singh was Research Associate at the Department of Zoology, Banaras Hindu University and later on Pool Officer at the Calcutta University during April-September 1974. He won the two year Commonwealth Fellowship in 1974 to carry out research at the Edinburgh University U.K. He stayed on to work as a Research Associate for two stints (1977-79 and 1979-87) at that university. During a leave from October 1976 to April 1977, he joined Calcutta University (Department of Zoology) as Guest Scientist. From July to September 1979 Dr. Singh was invited as Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra. He was awarded the Dr. S. P. Basu Memorial Medal of Zoological Society, Calcutta in 1973 for his outstanding contribution to the field of Cytogenetics. In 1974 the Indian National Science Academy decorated him with the Science Academy Medal for Young Scientists.

Work in CCMB
In June 1987, Dr Lalji Singh came back to India and joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad as senior scientist.

Dr. Lalji Singh and his colleagues developed a probe called Bkm-derived probe for DNA fingerprinting which brought CCMB to limelight. Since then this probe is being extensively used for forensic investigation, paternity determination and seed stock verification. For the first time DNA fingerprinting evidence was presented in the court of law in India. The Kerala High Court upheld the verdict and since then this indigenous technique has been used as evidence in more than 300 cases including the assassination of the late Prime Minister of India Shri Rajiv Gandhi. This fetched him and his group the CSIR Technology Award for the year 1992 for biological sciences. The direct result of this work was the formation of an autonomous institution, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics(CDFD) in 1995.

In 1998 he was appointed the Director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad.