B. Ravindran

Biography

I am a Microbiologist trained in JIPMER Pondicherry and Delhi University and later in Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK and University of Connecticut Health Centre, USA. I worked as a scientist with Indian Council of Medical Research for more than two decades and currently heading the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, an autonomous research institution under Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt of India. My Scientific interests include Immunology of infectious diseases such as Malaria, Filariasis and Sepsis, regulation of inflammation and macrophage biology in infectious diseases, evolution of immune system in mammals. My laboratory uses experimental animals as well as pathogen exposed humans as model systems. I have been an active member of a large global consortium of investigators from Universities and Research institutions in UK, USA, Germany, France, Netherlands, Malaysia and Indonesia for nearly a decade working on Immuno-biology of Metazoan pathogens. I have been a visiting Professor/Visiting Scientist at University Edinburgh, University of Bonn, Pasteur Institute at Lille during the last 10 years. My group has published about 90 scientific papers in International journals. Over the last three decades 18 PhD and 16 MD students worked with me and successfully completed their degrees. Current the strength of my laboratory is 3 PhD students, 2 post doctoral fellow and one woman scientist. In recent years I have been spending much of time serving as a member of Board of Governors and in Scientific Advisory Committees of several Research institutions and functioning as a peer-reviewer for several scientific journals and funding agencies in India and abroad.

Research Interest

Very broadly my laboratory is interested to understand Immunobiology of infectious diseases such as Malaria, Filariasis and Sepsis. We use a variety animal models and human diseases to seek insights into pathogenesis of disease processes, analysis of parasite components that induce host responses (inflammation and adaptive immune response), immunoregulatory network that determine pathology and/or outcome of infection process. More specifically, we characterize host response in the context of co-infections in animal models and in human communities. The experimental model allows us to understand effect of two pathogens with opposing immune response in the host. The other major project in the laboratory is directed towards inflammation mediated by pathogens and endogenous molecules broadly classified as DAMPs and the interplay and cross-talk between the two. We expect these studies to offer insights into how mammalian hosts ‘deal’ with pathogens and non-pathogenic commensal microbes. Our studies on regulation of inflammation and innate immunity have also led us into understanding macrophage biology and approaches to re-programme macrophage activity in inflammatory diseases. Our investigations on co-infections in human communities have given us opportunities to address genetic basis of infectious diseases and relationship between some of the infectious diseases and autoimmunity