Research Scholar from MSU Gets into PM's Doctoral Fellowship Program

Mr. Karan Joshi is a PhD student and he has been working under the guidance of Dr Prashant Murumkar on the development of novel anti-Alzheimer's agents along with developing alternative routes of synthesis of commercial drugs. He has bagged the Prime Minister's doctoral fellowship, a scheme for doctoral research which is a public-private partnership between Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), an autonomous body under Government of India's Department of Science and Technology and Confederation of Indian Industry.

This is the maximum government fellowship in India at any academic or research institute, where the full-time PhD scholars get a fellowship of around Rs 70,000 a month contributed by GOI and partner industry.

Mr. Karan Joshi and Dr Prashant will work with industry mentor Ashok Jhaveri, director of Megafine Pharma and ex-IITian, for the research project, reports Times of India.

This fellowship has been awarded to a total of 36 students from reputed institutes like IITs, NITs, IIS, Bangalore and partnering companies like Google India, Tata Steel and Reliance Industries.

Dr Prashant has also been working as a visiting scientist at Karolinska Institute, a medical university in Stockholm, since 2017 on the project for developing novel anti-Alzheimer's agents.

He along with professor M R Yadav is working in close collaboration with Dr Darreh-Shori's Lab, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society and Karolinska Institute on a project focusing on the development of a new class of compounds that potentiate acetylcholine biosynthesis by the enzyme known as choline-acetyltransferase.

The purpose of this fellowship is to encourage young, talented, enthusiastic and result-oriented scholars to take up industry-relevant research.