After completing his degree in medicine from the Christian Medical College, Vellore in 1979, Dr. Gowrishankar (born 1956) opted for a career in research and obtained his Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His Ph.D. training was in E.coli genetics and physiology, the general area in which he has continued his research ever since. Dr.Gowrishankar returned to India to join the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad as Scientist and Group Leader in January 1983. He remained there until May 2000 before accepting his present position as Staff Scientist in CDFD. The broad theme of Dr. Gowrishankar's research has been the use of genetic and molecular approaches to understand the mechanisms of (i) water-stress adaptation, (ii) spontaneous mutations, and (iii) interplay between replication-transcription-translation, in E.coli (see Research for details).

Dr. Gowrishankar is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy; Indian Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Sciences, India; and the International Molecular Biology Network-Asia Pacific (A-IMBN). He has been the recipient of Young Scientist awards of INSA(1986), CSIR(1987) and Association of Microbiologists of India (1991), BM Birla Prize (1991), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1997), FICCI Award (1997), CSIR Technology prize (2000), New Millennium Medal of Indian Science Congress (2000) and BREAD Role Model Award (2000).