Meet Our Leadership Team

Prof. (Dr.) M. Nasser is a distinguished academic and former Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Calicut (2019–2024). A well-recognised zoologist specialised in Entomology, he served as Professor in the Department of Zoology, University of Calicut, contributing over 25 years of excellence in postgraduate teaching and research.

Before beginning his professional career, Prof. Nasser earned his M.Sc., Ph.D., and CSIR Research Associateship from the University of Calicut. Throughout his career, he has led multiple institutional and extramural research projects and has published more than 75 peer-reviewed articles, in addition to several book chapters and other scholarly works.

Prof. Nasser has mentored 14 doctoral scholars and held key academic and administrative positions, including a seven-year tenure as Director of the Directorate of Research at the University of Calicut. He has served as Chairman of the Board of Studies and as a member of the Academic Council, Research Council, and other academic bodies across various universities. As Pro-Vice Chancellor of the largest university in Kerala, he has played a pivotal leadership role and has been instrumental in initiating the establishment of the Centre for Translational Research and various other research initiatives in the University of Calicut.

Continuing his academic and research pursuits, advancing zoological research and taxonomy, he is currently the Managing Trustee of the Prof. T. C. Narendran Trust for Animal Taxonomy and Managing Editor of the journal Biosystematica.

Prof. (Dr.) Rajendran Kooloth Valappil is a former Principal Scientist & Head, Aquatic Environment & Health Management Division, ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education (a Deemed University under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Mumbai and a former Professor, Department of Zoology, Central University of Kerala. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Calicut and entered the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in 1992 and joined ICAR-Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture, Chennai, as Scientist in 1993; moved to ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education as Senior Scientist and, became Principal Scientist in 2006.

As a recipient of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) post-doctoral fellowship, he worked at Yeosu National University, South Korea (2000–2001); worked as Fish Pathologist at the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia (2003–2006) and under the Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship, worked at the Auburn University, USA (2011).

Prof. Rajendran has led various institutional and extramural research projects, including an international collaborative project on different aspects of fish and shellfish diseases, and has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles, besides other publications, including edited books. He has more than 32 years of research experience including ~25 years of post-graduate teaching and mentoring, 8 years of administrative experience of heading the Research Division.

He served as Dean (Academics), Dean (External Relations), Chairman, Board of Studies, Member, Academic Council, Board of Management, Extension Council, Board of Examiners of the Fisheries University, and Member of the Management Committees of three national institutes. Prof. Rajendran serves as one of the Editors of the journal Virus Disease (Springer) and Editorial Board Member, Fish & Shellfish Immunology Reports (Elsevier). Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor at the ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai.

Dr. Deepti Madayi is the recipient of the Chief Minister’s NavaKerala Postdoctoral Fellowship and is currently engaged in research at the Inter-University Centre for Plant Biotechnology, Department of Botany, University of Calicut. Her ongoing project, titled “An In-silico Approach to Predict and Clone Antimicrobial Peptides from Black Pepper and Its Recombinant Production as Promising Candidates Against Bacterial and Fungal Phytopathogens”, integrates computational and molecular techniques to explore novel plant-based antimicrobials.

She holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the University of Calicut, where her doctoral research focused on the isolation and biochemical characterization of plant lectins. Her core research interests include protein expression and characterization, molecular biology, and biochemical techniques. Dr. Madayi also has international research experience, having worked at the National University of Singapore (Aug 2005 – Nov 2006) under the Structural Biology and Proteomics Division of the Department of Biological Sciences. There, she was involved in the sub-cloning, expression, and purification of the ZZ domain from dystrophin for structural studies using NMR spectroscopy.

She has over four years of teaching experience and is the author of five international publications and a book chapter published by Springer. Her work has been recognized with the Best Paper Presentation Award (Faculty Category) at the International Web Conference – Bioinventiyon ’20: Advances in Biosciences. In 2020, she received the International Best Researcher Award by ScienceFather (Scifax Company Group) under the theme New Science Inventions (NESIN).

She has successfully qualified the National Eligibility Test (NET) conducted by the Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ASRB) in August 2016. Dr. Madayi has also contributed to academic content development, having created 15 educational modules on Bioinformatics (Cell Biology and Biological Databases) as part of an e-content series produced by the EMMRC, University of Calicut for the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC), New Delhi. In recognition of her academic excellence, she was awarded a Gold Medal in Microbiology for securing the highest marks in her final year undergraduate examination conducted by Mangalore University.