Dr. S. Mahalingam received Ph.D from School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University. For his Ph.D. he worked on the transcriptional regulation of Fibroin gene expression in silkworm Bombyx mori. He was appointed as staff scientist at CDFD after completing his postdoctoral research at Thomas Jefferson University and University of Alabama, USA. His postdoctoral training was in structure-function studies of HIV/SIV regulatory proteins. The broad theme of his research has been the use of biological, biochemical, and molecular approaches to understand the mechanism of HIV mediated AIDS pathogenesis.