Professor Dr Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain (DoB: April 13, 1954), Ph.D., D.Sc. (h.c.), D.Med.Sc. (h.c.) is a National Science Chair at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and is a Distinguished Professor at Sharda University, Greater Noida. He served as Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Hamdard (2016-2021) and University of Hyderabad (2005-2011). He was the first Director (1999-2005) of Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad. He received the Order of Merit (Das Verdienstkreuz, 1.Klasse) from the President of Germany and Padma Shri from the President of India. Professor Hasnain has also served as Visiting Professor at IIT-Delhi (2016-2021), as Lecturer at Delhi University (1981-1983) and as a Staff Scientist at National Institute of Immunology (1987-2001).

Prof. Hasnain’s lab works on molecular pathogenesis of infectious organisms, functional molecular infection epidemiology and designing novel intervention strategies for intervention against pathogenic bacterium. Studying the dissemination dynamics, using genetic typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) isolates from India, he showed the presence of ancestral isolates as the predominant form circulating in India which could explain the lack of concordance between bacterial load and disease burden in the Indian population. Functional characterization of M.tb hypothetical PE/PPE protein family revealed their importance as diagnostics, vaccine candidates and drug targets. He earlier contributed extensively to our understanding of the transcriptional regulation and high-level expression of heterologous genes in the baculovirus insect cell system. His earlier collaborative work on HBV generated some novel findings with clinical applications. He has >300 publications in peer-reviewed journals of high impact, and >2 dozen patents. He has mentored >150 PhD, MD and Post-Doc students, four of whom received the prestigious INSA Young Scientist Medal.