Bihari scientist settled in US offers his services in the state for developing Nano sciences

Professor RatneshwarLal , who hails from a remote village in Darbhanga district, currently at the university of CaliforniaSan Diego (UCSD) has earned abig name in Nano medicine. Lal is positive about state's potentials for developing Nano sciences. "During my brief stay in Bihar I got an opportunities to meet some of the bureaucrats. I am willing to share my experiences in Bihar if the government needs my services and expertise", Lal told.

Lal was in India week-long visit to deliver key note lectures at the 13th international conference of the Controlled Release Society (CRS) India Branch in Hyderabad and National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. While in Bihar he gave a public lecture at LN Mithila university, department of Physics. In Patna he made his presentation before a select group of academics and bureaucrats at the Aryabhatt knowledge university, Magadh Mahila College and NIT Patna. Lal is married to an US PhD scholar in Sociology Debby Sherman. He said that he is more willing to pay back to the society.

There are many diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (with progressive memory loss as we grow older), Parkinson disease (muscle tremors), tuberculosis, type 2 diabetes, arthritis and some kinds of cancer are linked to defective arrangements of proteins" he added.

Talking about his latest research on nano medicine, he said : "When proteins are not properly arranged (the process commonly known as protein misfolding), they make structures that are usually toxic to cells and tissues in our body. Above mentioned diseases and many more diseases are linked to such protein misfolding".

According to Lal, misfolded proteins have disordered structures and often appear as clumps (commonly called plaques) in the pathological samples from diseased patients. All Alzheimer's patients' brain samples have such plaques. Interestingly, all different diseases have plaques but they are made of different proteins.

"Ratnakar leads a simple life at home and work and enjoys strong ethical standards. He does not miss to visit his relatives and friends whenever he visits India and abroad. For him achievements in professional life should not be at the cost of social bonding", recall his two social scientists friends Pramodanand Das and Rajeshwar Mishra .

Lal born in a small village, Balour in Darbhanga district did his early education in Balour, Patna and Muzaffarpur, graduating in BSc Physics (Hons) in 1976. He then moved to JNU in New Delhi for higher education.

He then moved to USA and received his PhD in 1987 in neurobiology from the university of Alabama. After postdoctoral training at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), he was a faculty member at the university of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Before assuming his current position at University of California San Diego (UCSD), he was a professor and the director of the newly established Centre of Nanomedicine at the University of Chicago.