Gurunath Ramanathan

Dr. Gurunath Ramanathan is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He holds a PhD (1994) from IISc Bangalore, an M.Sc. (1988) and B.Sc. (Hons) from Delhi University, all in Chemistry. His research group focuses on environmental biodegradation, protein modeling, fluorescent probe development, and peptide chemistry, with active projects involving microbial isolation from industrial waste and selenoprotein synthesis.

Research Focus: Key areas include microbial degradation of mono-/di-substituted aromatics, 3-nitrotoluene dioxygenase mechanisms, GFP-derived fluorescent probes, hyperthermophilic protein stability, and peptide-protein ligation techniques. His team collaborates on microorganism detection systems integrating cell sorting and on-chip PCR.

Publications: Recent work (2009-2013) demonstrates consistent focus on environmental microbiology (biodegradation pathways), biophysical chemistry (protein chromophore dynamics), and structural chemistry (peptide conformation analysis).

Awards:

• Axel Wenner-Gren Foundation Fellowship (1998)

Professional Affiliations:

• Life Member: Chemical Research Society of India, Indian Peptide Society, NMR Society of India
• Member: American Chemical Society