Monday, September 6, 2010

He started working with the Rockefeller Foundation to support

He has been on the Scientific American's list of the world's 50 most influential technologists, and is much in demand replica bag, speaking in Dakar, Senegal replica bag, one week, addressing the UN's World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) the next replica bag, and generally trying to shake up the world with his radical ideas on making the tools of scientific research available to all, particularly to scientists of the developing world. It is not often replica bag one gets to take a scientist of Jefferson's standing out to lunch at short notice replica bag, and I am delighted when he agrees to come for "a good Japanese meal and nothing else" during a brief visit to Delhi. Jefferson was here at the invitation of Samir K Brahmachari, director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to mark a milestone in the government's Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) project replica bag, exactly the kind of initiative replica bag he has been championing. OSDD, launched in September 2008 Birkin Handbag bag, is a $ 35 million collaborative research project to accelerate R&D for TB drugs Jefferson has a tight schedule and the lunch has to be in a nearby restaurant where the service won't take too long. So we settle for Gulati in Pandara Park and Jefferson comes in his trademark floral shirt — and a smorgasbord of ideas replica bag makes the food irrelevant for me. Clearly familiar with Japanese cuisine, the Australia-based scientist takes a while to make his choice. And his order replica bag, like much of his conversation, can leave one breathless. He orders for both of us: a barra kebab (spicy chunks of mutton marinated overnight and cooked in a tandoor) replica bag, a yellow dal specialty of the house and the Hyderabadi staple mirchi ka salan (long green chillies in a thick gravy). Jefferson tucks in with gusto, thoroughly enjoying the food despite its pungency while I fall back on an extra sweet lime juice to take the edge off. Where did he learn to eat such spicy stuff? "Don't forget I am an old Japan hand replica bag," says replica bag extraordinary man who was incubating his biotech revolution when he first came to Japan in 1989-1990. "I was the first senior molecular biologist hired by the FAO of the UN but based out of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. FAO was interested in the concept of Cambia, which revolved around enabling innovation by others rather than the creation of 'centres of excellence' with top-down experts and expertise." His first visit was to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre along with a long tour of other institutions replica bag had biotechnology capabilities replica bag, from ICGEB (International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology) to ICAR and CSIR Institutes, such as CCMB in Hyderabad replica bag, as also universities across the country. He is probably the only visiting scientist to have such an exhaustive and close working knowledge of Japan's vast scientific establishment. Even after he left FAO to put Cambia together as an autonomous institute — "it had to be nimble, edgy replica bag, different and entrepreneurial, traits replica bag UN agencies and bureaucracies of all stripes can't stomach replica bag," he says — Jefferson's links with Japanese science continued.

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