K. VijayRaghavan is a biologist whose group studies how nerves, muscles, and synapses are assembled to allow diverse functions to emerge during animal development. Using the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster as a model, he and his collaborators have studied how the identity of neurons and muscles are specified and how these early events lead to the formation of functional circuits in walking, flight, and olfaction.
In his role as a public facilitator of science, VijayRaghavan served as Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR); then Secretary to the Department of Biotechnology in the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of India, and subsequently served as India’s Principal Scientific Adviser till April 2022. He is now Professor Emeritus and Homi Bhabha Chair at NCBS. VijayRaghavan is a fellow of the Royal Society, a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society.