Hyderabad, April 8, 2002 : Ocimum with its commitment to adding to its intellectual & knowledge bank has included two more eminent biotech personalities in its Advisory Board.

Dr. Arjula R. Reddy is currently a Professor of life sciences at the University of Hyderabad. He received his Ph.D from Osmania University and Post Doctoral training at Iowa State University, USA and The Johns Hopkins University, USA. He has over 20 years of teaching and research experience in Genetics, Plant Molecular Biology and Plant Biotechnology, and Functional Genomics. His research interests are in Molecular and Genetic Analysis of Stress Responsive Pathways in Rice, Genetic Engineering of Flavonoid Pathway and Epicuticular wax biosynthesis pathway. He has a major genomics research project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, USA., and his group has already sequenced and analysed more than 3000 clones of rice and deposited in GenBank. He has a large number of publications in peer-reviewed international journals. He has been a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute, Koln, Germany and also Purdue University with which he maintains a strong research collaboration in the area of Functional Genomics.

Dr. Sudha Chugani is currently a Senior Scientist at AmbioCare America Inc.. Her efforts aim to optimize microbial components of products used in environmental bioremediation. Dr. Chugani received her Ph. D from the University of Illinois in 1998 under the direction of the renowned Dr. A. M. Chakrabarty. Her thesis work involved dissection of molecular mechanisms of biodegradation pathways in bacteria. Dr. Chugani then moved on to a work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Iowa for two years where her goals included understanding bacterial signaling mechanisms. Dr. Chugani has over 10 years research experience in molecular biology and bacterial genetics. Dr. Chugani holds a Masters degree in Microbiology from Haffkine Institue, Bombay, and a Bachelors degree in Science from the University of Bombay.

Ocimum Biosolutions provides integrated R&D Bioinformatics solutions and contract research services with operations both in the USA and India. Ocimum Biosolutions has its U.S. Headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana and a branch office at Newport Beach, California. The Indian arm of Ocimum Biosolutions is located in Hyderabad. The company’s primary focus is to be a one-stop destination for Bioinformatics consulting needs and also on development of key ready-to-use Bioinformatics software modules, contract research and training.