Dr. Achuthsankar S Nair heads the Centre for Bioinformatics, University of Kerala. He had his BTech (Electrical Engineering) from College of Engineering, Trivandrum and MTech (Electrical Engineering) from IIT Bombay. He also holds on M.Phil in Computer Speech and Language Processing from the Dept of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK and PhD from University of Kerala.
Since 1987, he has taught in various Engineering Colleges, Universities and Institutes both within India and abroad. During 2001 – 2004 he served as Director of Centre for Development of Imaging Technology, C-DIT, an autonomous techno-creative centre of Govt of Kerala. In 2006 he was a Visiting Professor in University of Korea, Seoul. From 2007 onwards, he is a member of the Executive Committee of Higher Education Council of Govt of Kerala and also a syndicate member of the Cochin University of Science & Technology.
He has authored 10 popular-science books on IT in Malayalam, including one on the internet in 1996 and one on Free software in 2002. He has a modest number of research publications including journals such as IEEE Transactions, IEEE Conference Proceedings, Journal of Computer Society of India, ACM, International Journal of Computational Molecular Biology, and Bioinformation. One of his contributions on electro-mechanical model for the Transistor is cited in the classic text book: Hughes’s Electrical Technology (7th Edition) published by Orient Longman, UK.
His current areas of research interests include use of digital signal processing (DSP) in genomics and proteomics, image processing, use of chaos game theory in computational biology and bio-sequence compression, computer music and educational informatics. 4 Candidates have taken PhD under his supervision.
Carnatic classical music tops his hobby list, followed by local history of Trivandrum in early 19th century. He has published on both the areas. During his tenure as Director, C-DIT, he had led the establishment of the music-rich web site www.swathithirunal.in
He is recipient of Young Scientist Award of Govt. of Kereala (1991), Cambridge Barclay Scholarship (1991), ISTE National Award for Young Engineering Teachers (1994). During 2003-2006, he chaired the board of studies in computer science of University of Kerala and led a massive curricular reform which has been published by the University in 2005. He is a member of Computer Society of India, IEEE, Indian Society for Technical Education, and International Society for Computational Biology.
Very Short Resume
Dr Achuthsankar S Nair heads the Centre for Bioinformatics, University of Kerala. He is an electrical engineer who had his education from University of Kerala, IIT-Bombay and University of Cambridge, UK. He has taught in various engineering colleges and universities, both in India and abroad since 1987. He had served as Director of C-DIT, Govt of Kerala and also as Visiting Professor in University of Korea. His activities include teaching, research and popular science writing in IT, Computational Biology and also some interdisciplinary areas.