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Prof. Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, born in Chennai, is a chemist at the University of Cambridge. He co-invented Solexa sequencing, the technology behind most of today's fast and cheap genome sequencing, and studies four-stranded DNA structures called G-quadruplexes.
Key contributions
- Co-inventor of Solexa next-generation DNA sequencing
- Fellow of the Royal Society (2012); knighted (2017)
- Millennium Technology Prize (2020); Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2022)
- Named a Clarivate Citation Laureate ('Nobel-class') in 2023