Amit Prakash Sharma

Amit Prakash Sharma (born April 12, 1968) is an Indian parasitologist and the head of the Structural and Computational Biology Group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. Known for his studies on the disease of malaria, Sharma is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, for his contributions to biosciences in 2007 and he received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2011.

Amit Sharma, born on April 12, 1968, earned his master's degree from Purdue University and did his doctoral studies in protein crystallography at the Northwestern University to secure a PhD in 1995. His post-doctoral work was at the Oxford University until 2000 during which time he also served as a faculty the Trinity College of Oxford University. On his return to India in 2004, he joined the Structural and Computational Biology Group of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) as a staff scientist. He heads the group where he hosts a number of scholars and scientists.

Sharma resides in Vasant Kunj, in New Delhi.

Sharma's research is focused in the field of structural parasitology, and he has carried out advanced research in malaria parasite biology. He led the ICGEB group of scientists who collaborated with the researchers from the Broad Institute who discovered a new compound, bicyclic azetidine, which showed potential against the Plasmodium parasite that caused malaria. His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles. PublicationsList, an online repository of scientific articles, has listed several of them.

He has delivered keynote or invited speeches at many conferences and sits on the editorial board of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, India for Section B - Biological Sciences.

The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded Sharma the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2007. He received the Goyal Prize in 2009. In 2011, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest science award in India,in the biological sciences category, He was selected for the Infosys Prize in 2015 for his contribution to life sciences.

The 2015 RCSB PDB Poster Prize of the Asian Crystallographic Association was secured by Vitul Jain for his poster, based on an article, Structure of Prolyl-tRNA Synthetase-Halofuginone Complex Provides Basis for Development of Drugs against Malaria and Toxoplasmosis. which he co-wrote with Sharma.

The National Academy of Sciences, India elected Sharma as a fellow in 2006 and he received the elected fellowship of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2012.