Mr. Sam G. Pitroda

Sam Pitroda brings enormous professional weight and credibility to FRLHT as the Chairman of the Governing Council. His reputation as an internationally respected telecom inventor, management guru and entrepreneur has been built over the past 38 years in the telecom and IT industries the world over. His experience straddles corporate, technological, management and sociological worlds.

Mr. Pitroda is Currently Chairman of the Knowledge Commission, Government of India, and also the Chairman of WorldTel Ltd. He is the Founding Chairman of Telecom Commission, Government of India and also founder of several companies in the United States and Europe, including Wescom which was one of the first digital switching companies in the world.

Mr. Pitroda owns over 50 worldwide patents, including the digital diary which was used by companies such as Casio, Sharp and Texas Instruments etc. He is credited with having laid the foundation for and ushered in India's technology revolution in the 1980s as Technology Advisor to the Prime minister of India.

Dr. Kamaljit Bawa

Kamal Bawa, an evolutionary ecologist and a conservation biologist, obtained his doctoral degree form Panjab University, India. He has held Bullard and Cabot Fellowships at Harvard University, and has also been named a Guggenheim Fellow as well as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment. Currently, a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Kamal Bawa, has published more than 160 papers, and edited eight books, monographs or special issues of journals. He is the editor-in-chief of Conservation and Society, an interdisciplinary journal in conservation, and also serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. He has served on many national and international advisory panels. He has been the President of the Association for Tropical Biology., and is a member of the board of several foundations. Kamal Bawa is the founder-president of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), a non-governmental organisation devoted to research, policy analysis, and education in India (www.atree.org). He is also a founder-trustee of the Center for Interdisciplinary studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore, India (www.cised.org).

Dr. Gerard Bodeker

Professor Gerard Bodeker, an Australian whose doctoral studies were at Harvard University, researches and advises on international public policy on traditional, complementary & alternative medicine.

He has been Chair of the Commonwealth Working Group on Traditional & Complementary Medicine and done work on medicinal plant conservation for the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility and the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, for which he produced with colleagues a book on Medicinal Plants for Forest Conservation and Healthcare. He chaired the International Advisory Panel to the Government of Malaysia for the development of the herbal sector & is international editor of the Malaysian-based publication, the Journal of Tropical Medicinal Plants.

He is advising the Malaysian Herbal Corporation on medicinal crops as components of Malaysia's new agricultural policy. Gerry Bodeker has written extensively on traditional medicine and is co-founder of the WHO-affiliated Research Initiative on Traditional Antimalarial Methods (RITAM). He was Guest Editor on special issue on Traditional Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine's journal Tropical Doctor. He is also founding editor of the Medline-listed Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine.

Dr.M.S. Valiathan

Dr Marthanda Varma Sankaran Valiathan is a noted Cardiac surgeon. He hails from Mavelikara. He is former Director of Sri Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences, Thiruvananthapuram and former Vice Chancellor of MAHE (Manipal Academy of Higher Education). He was invited to deliver the prestigious Hunterian lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London. Apart from Cardiac Surgery he has a keen interest in Bio-medical engineering.

F.R.C.S. Royal College of Surgeons England 1960

F.R.C.S. Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh 1960

Ch.M. University of Liverpool U.K. 1962 (Master of Surgery)

F.R.C.S. Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Canada 1970 (Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery)

- Received Cardiac Surgical training in the John Hopkins and Georgetown University hospitals, U.S.

- Served as Professor of Cardiac Surgery at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology for 20 years.

Special Interests:

- Heart diseases in children: valvular heart disease.

- Led a group which developed a tilting disc heart valve and other cardiovascular devices which are commercially produced.

- Published a monograph and over 100 scientific papers on cardiac topics.

- Professional contributions recognised by election to many academies in India and abroad and by the award of the Hunterian Professorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Dr.AV Balasubramanian

Balu's basic training is in the area of chemistry with specialization in bio-chemistry and bio-physics. Since 1982, he has been involved and interested in understanding, exploring and developing the current relevance and applications of traditional Indian Science and technology.

Traditional healthcare systems is his special area of interest. He is involved in a number of organisations working for the revitalisation of traditional Indian sciences and Technologies, such as Patriotic and People oriented Science and Technology foundation, LSPSS, etc.

He has been involved in research and has written on varied areas of traditional knowledge including Yoga, Ayurveda, Tradional Irrigation, Indigenous Metallurgy and the Nature and Organisation of Traditional Indian Knowledge Systems, particularly the methodology of science.

Dr.Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala is Professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, India and was department Chair till recently. He received his B.Tech degree from IIT, Kanpur, and his MS and Ph.D degrees from the University of Maine. From 1979 to 1981, he was with Washington State University as Assistant Professor. Since 1981, he has been teaching at IIT, Madras.

Dr.Jhunjhunwala leads the Telecommunications and Computer Networks group (TeNeT) at IIT Madras. This group is closely working with industry in the development of a number of Telecommunications and Computer Network Systems. TeNeT group has incubated a number of technology companies which work in partnership with TeNeT group to develop world class Telecom Access products. The group has also incubated a company which aims to install and operate telephone and Internet in every village in India.

Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala has been awarded Padma Shri in the year 2002. He has been awarded Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1998, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai Research Award for the year 1997, Millennium Medal at Indian Science Congress in the year 2000 and H. K. Firodia for "Excellence in Science & Technology" for the year 2002. He is a Fellow of INAE, INSA and NAS and a member of Prime Minister Scientific Advisory Committee.

Dr. Jhunjhunwala is a Director in the Board of SBI. He is also a Board member of several Telecom and IT companies in India, including Polaris, Sasken, Tejas and HTL, NRDC, and IDRBT. He was a former Board member of VSNL & BSNL.

Dr. K.R.S. Murthy

Dr. K. R. S. Murthy obtained his Doctorate in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School and his Masters in Management from Sloan School, MIT. He worked in industry for nearly a decade, before taking up studies in management. After his doctorate, he served the field of management education and administration for 25 years, during which period he taught at the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, Boston University, and was director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Prof. Ranjit Roy Chaudhury

Professor Ranjit Roy Chaudhury is a leading clinical pharmacologist in the country, who heads the India-WHO Programme in Rational Use of Drugs in India.

Professor Roy Chaudhury obtained his D.Phil from Oxford after which he has worked as Professor of Pharmacology and Dean at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh. He has also worked in senior positions at the World Health Organization and now holds the position of Emeritus Scientist at the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and UNESCO Professor of Rational Use of Drugs at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.

Professor Roy Chaudhury's major interests are in clinical pharmacology, rational use of drugs, herbal medicines and in contraceptive development. He has published several books in these areas and heads the Toxicology Review Panel of the Indian Council of Medical Research and the Scientific Advisory Group in Traditional Medicine of the same organization.

Mrs.Bhargavi Amma

Bhargavi Amma has deep interest in Indian spiritual traditions and is a follower of Bakthi Marga. She has profound knowledge in the Vedas, Astrology and spirituality. She practices Netraroga chikitsa (Ayurveda Ophthalmology) which she systematically learnt from a Guru. Amma has aslo written hundreds of devotional poems and songs.

Mr. Sanjiv Phansalkar

Mr. Sanjiv Phansalkar was professor in IRMA for more than a dozen years, and was the director with International Water Management Institute, Anand and now he is with Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Mumbai.

Mr. A.N. Singh

Mr A N Singh was born on the 10th October, 1946. After finishing his Honors in B.A he joined the Indian Police Service in 1969 where he served in the Bihar Cadre till 1990. After retiring as the DIG of Police, Mr A N Singh joined Tata Steel as the Principal Executive Officer to the Chairman and Managing Director. He then served as General Manager - Town Services, Vice-President - Town, Medical and Social Services and Deputy Managing Director - Corporate Services till September 2007. He is also associated with several social service and sports organizations.

Dr. Padma Venkat

Dr. Padma Venkat received the prestigious Cambridge-Nehru Merit Scholarship to undertake PhD at University of Cambridge, UK. She was awarded her PhD in the year 1990 for her study on the biochemical and molecular aspects of Bacillus subtilis spore germination. On her return to India she has used her technical training to develop new strategies in trans-disciplinary research (Modern Science & Ayurveda) to arrive at processes and products that have a societal impact.

Dr. Padma Venkat has been instrumental in setting up the Pharmacognosy Group at FRLHT from scratch in the year 2001. The annual budget of the group has grown since then from Rs. 10 lakh to ~Rs. 1 Crore, through >20 projects and several customer based services (Product Development, Testing and Training). The Group began with a basic Chemistry and Microbiology facility. Today it has not only strengthened its instrumentation and analytical facilities but also added on Molecular Biology and Plant Microscopy components that are valuable to Pharmacognosy. She has obtained several research grants from funding agencies such as DST, MoEF, TATA, Ford Foundation and the National Geographic Society. From the first very year she had taken on Consultancies to industries and developed 25 contemporary nutraceutical & cosmeceutical products such as herbal drink, herbal soups, Ayurvedic cookies etc.

She is an accredited PhD guide by Manipal University and awaiting accreditation from SASTRA University, Tanjore. She will be guiding three PhD students in 2008-09. She has published several scientific and general articles and has 2 patents to her credit. Dr. Padma Venkat has demonstrated her administrative and management capacity as a Joint Director and Head of Pharmacognosy, Pharmaceutics & Pharmacology Group of FRLHT. She plays an important role in the organisation's management as Member, Governing Council and Executive Board of FRLHT.

Mr.D.K. Ved

Mr D K Ved is one of the senior most serving Indian Forest Service officers. He has his expertise in Forestry surveys and remote sensing; Medicinal Plants Conservation Programmes and databases; Eco-distribution mapping of medicinal plants.

He has worked in different positions, from the level of Assistant Conservator of Forests to the Chief Conservator of Forests, in the Indian Forest Service for more than 30 years including over 10 years in FRLHT's medicinal plants conservation projects.

He has a Bachelor's degree in Mech.Engg. and is an Associate of Indian Forest College

Mr.Darshan Shankar

Darshan Shankar started his professional career in 1973 at the University of Bombay as the coordinator of an inter-disciplinary center for development research. At this center he conceived, designed and implemented a pioneering action-research programme, which provided graduates of any discipline a 2-year fellowship to live in a rural community and apply their formal learning to a real life situation. This programme won a "Commonwealth Award" in 1976 being adjudged as the best project in the Commonwealth for linking university education to community needs.

Between 1980 and 1992 he lived and worked in a tribal area in Maharashtra.

In 1993, he founded the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions.

In 1998, he was awarded "Norman Borlaug Award" for his contributions to promoting conservation of medicinal plants, and in 2002, FRLHT was awarded the "Equator Initiative Prize" by the United Nations.

In 2003, the Columbia University's Centre for Complementary & Alternative Medicines gave its first International Award to Darshan Shankar & FRLHT, in recognition of FRLHT's outstanding contributions to revitalization of traditional systems of health-care in India.

Prof.Bhushan Patwardhan

Professor Bhushan Patwardhan has made innovative, outstanding and original contributions both in education and research. As a member of the Senate, Academic Council, Management Council and various Boards of Studies at the University of Pune, he has provided noteworthy visionary thought leadership. His research career has been equally outstanding, including globally acclaimed contributions to Ayurveda, ethnopharmacology, herbal drug technology and drug discovery. His pioneering work has led to many important national projects.

He is ranked in top authors of Elsevier’s SciTopic most popular pages, Journal of Ethnopharmacology and Oxford Journal ECAM. A summary of his papers has resulted 779 citations with Scopus h index 17. He is founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine. He has been a major contributor to several government initiatives and is a member of many high-level academic, government and civil committees.

He promotes industry academia cooperation and has practices participatory corporate governance. He has developed many novel student centric programs by involving various stakeholders to ensure that the academic, teaching and research activities are relevant to societal needs.

Dr. Ashwini Mathur

Dr. Ashwini Mathur is currently India Operations Head, Integrated Information Sciences, India for Novartis Healthcare Private Limited based in Hyderabad heading up a team of close to 90 programmers, statisticians and scientists reporting Novartis global clinical trials.

Ashwini has a PhD in Biostatistics from University of California, Berkeley, USA. He has several publications on collaborative medical research, book chapters and invited presentations. He is Secretary for International Biometrics Society and a member of DIA and ISCR. He is Adjunct Faculty at Institute of Applied Biology and Bioinformatics, Bangalore and Indian Institute of Ayurvedic and Integrative Medicine, Bangalore. He is one of the founding members of the “Indian Association for Statistics in Clinical Trials”.