Director,
National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute,
Mohali
Ashwani Pareek (born 27 September 1969 in Delhi and native of Sambhar Lake, Rajasthan, India) is Executive Director of NABI, a prominent plant biologist and educator noted chiefly for his contribution in the area of plant molecular biology and biotechnology. He is currently working as Professor at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. He is a recipient of several honours including the Visitors award for Technology Development from the President of India for developing Stress Tolerant Rice of the Next Generation (STRONG) that has the potential to enhance the income of rice farmers. He has interest in understanding the physiological and molecular adaptations in xero-halophytic plants and development of transgenic rice plants with enhanced tolerance towards multiple abiotic stresses. After receiving PhD degree, Pareek received the prestigious Post-Doctoral Fellowship by The Rockefeller Foundation, New York, BOYSCAST Fellowship to work at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA and INSA-Royal visiting scientist fellowship to work at University of Cambridge, U.K. He has been an elected Fellow of various Science Academies in India. With over 20 years of teaching experience, more than 200 publications and several international patents, he has been serving as Editor of reputed journals such as Plant Physiology and many others.