NEWS – Prakash Kumar Receives the 2024 Distinguished Scientist Award for SIVB

Professor Prakash Kumar received the 2024 Distinguished Scientist Award at the 2024 World Congress on In Vitro Biology in St. Louis, Missouri. His education began in India and his graduate work was with Professor Trevor Thorpe in Calgary, Canada, where he completed his PhD in 1988. He also continued as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Trevor’s lab for two years before beginning a faculty position at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in September 1989.

Prakash has been an active member of SIVB for over 20 years of active membership. He began as a ‘Student Member’ of the Tissue Culture Association (TCA, 1986-1987) and received the inaugural John S. Song Foundation award for a graduate student to attend and present a paper at the Joint Meeting of the TCA and IAPTC at Minneapolis, MN, in 1986. His research in Canada emphasized the effects of ethylene and carbon dioxide in the headspace gas on adventitious shoot bud induction in cotyledon cultures of Pinus radiata. 

He is currently a tenured full Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore (NUS) and has managed a research program with cumulative research funding of over $20 million and contributed to training 30 Ph.D. and 7 M.Sc. students. His primary interests have concentrated on better understanding the physiological and molecular genetic mechanisms of vegetative shoot development as well as understanding plant response to abiotic stresses, with the long-term aim of developing plants with enhanced salinity tolerance. His research group uses Arabidopsis, rice and the mangrove Avicennia sp. as experimental systems. Their research in phytohormone (auxin, ABA and gibberellin) signal transduction has shown promise toward biotechnological applications to develop biological resources uniquely adapted to the needs of Singapore. 

Prakash served as the Plant Biotechnology Section Secretary/Treasurer of SIVB during 2014 – 2016 and was a candidate for the SIVB Awards Chair in 2019-2020. He has given many presentations at the SIVB annual meetings and served several times as a judge for the student and postdoctoral presentations during the SIVB meetings. More recently, he has taken an active role in helping to establish an SIVB endowment fund in honor of Dr. Trevor A. Thorpe. 

He is a Life Member and Elected Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Biology and currently, serves as the National Correspondent for the International Association for Plant Biotechnology (IAPB) from Singapore. 

He continues to make significant contributions to plant tissue culture research with 126 research publications, 9 chapters in books, 3 patents, 1 book and over 60 invited talks in international conferences within the field. In 2022 he became the founding Director of the Research Center on Sustainable Urban Farming at NUS for Singapore. The objective is to increase the percentage of locally grown foods by about three-fold, from the current level of 10%, on Singapore’s limited land area. Primary emphasis in intensive growth of leafy green vegetable species in which in-vitro techniques are optimized in different species. A multi-disciplinary approach is envisioned to accomplish this difficult objective. Besides his service to SIVB, Prakash has investigated a large number of plant species in his published work and has maintained significant scientific interaction with students and colleagues in SIVB and in his host organization. He regards his current position a significant challenge in translation of science into practice to help achieve food self-sufficiency for Singapore.