George Thomas

Dr. Thomas holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He did his postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA prior to returning to India as the head of the Molecular Biology Group at SPIC Science Foundation in Chennai.

Dr. Thomas working in Prof J D Padayatty's laboratory at IISc, along with Dr H A Vasavada, was the first to clone a gene and perform DNA sequencing in India. Among his many notable achievements is a letter in Nature during his PhD on the organization and bidirectional transcription of H2A, H2B and H4 histone genes in rice. Dr. Thomas has also made extensive contributions to the field of plant biotechnology, including the development of insect resistant rice and tobacco, studying salt tolerance mechanisms in crops and useful technologies for genetic engineering of crop plants.

Further Dr. Thomas was instrumental in several successful grant applications during his academic tenure.He has been a member on several educational, technology and advisory boards and has mentored a large number of students for their PhD or other projects..