Virendra Nath Pandey, after completing his graduate (Biology and Agricultural Sciences) and master's (Mycology and Plant Pathology) degrees in 1966 and 1968 respectively from
Banaras Hindu University, started his career as a lecturer at Ranjit Singh Memorial PG College of
Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University (formerly Agra University), where he worked until 1970. His next move was to Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited,
Rishikesh as a microbiologist and in 1973, he joined
Bhabha Atomic Research Centre as an assistant professor, simultaneously pursuing his doctoral studies to secure his PhD from
Mumbai University in 1985. He served BARC until 1996 when he moved to
New Jersey Medical School of
Rutgers University as an assistant professor where he is a
emeritus professor at the department of microbiology, biochemistry and molecular genetics. He proposed that this presence in the
prolymphocytes influences the rearrangement and recombination of genes in vertebrates. His researches are documented in a number of articles;
ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific papers, has listed 91 of them. He has attended several international seminars, chaired many of them and has been an invited speaker at several others;
Reverse Transcription Session of Retroviral Meeting of
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (2003),
International Conference on Drug Discovery of
Central Drug Research Institute (2006), 36th Annual Meeting of Control Release Society, Copenhagen (2009) and
Virology, Immunology and Epidemiology of Hepatitis Viruses - International Conference on Virology at Baltimore (2011) are some of the notable ones. He held the Biotechnology Associateship of the
Department of Biotechnology in 1991 and the
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards the same year. == See also ==