Biography
Dr. Santosh B. Satbhai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at IISER Mohali, where he also serves as Associate Dean (Student Affairs). His research focuses on how plants sense, acquire and manage nutrients, with particular emphasis on iron homeostasis, light-mediated nutrient signaling, root development and plant-microbe interactions. His laboratory uses Arabidopsis thaliana and crop species as model systems to uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying plant nutrient responses, and applies these insights to iron biofortification, genome editing and microbial biostimulants for climate-resilient agriculture.
Dr. Satbhai received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Pune and his Ph.D. in Plant Biology from Nagoya University, Japan, where he investigated circadian clock genes in moss as a MEXT scholar. He then conducted postdoctoral research at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology in Vienna, Austria, and at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, USA. He joined IISER Mohali in 2018. He continues to lead research at the intersection of plant nutrition, signaling, development and plant-microbe interactions.
His work has been supported by ANRF, DBT, SERB and CEFIPRA, and his honors include the SERB Early Career Research Award and a Scientific High-Level Visiting Fellowship from the Embassy of France. He was recently invited to join the Advisory Board of New Phytologist.