Utpal Nath

Biography

Utpal Nath obtained his B.Sc. (Agriculture) and M.Sc. (Agricultural Biotechnology) from state agricultural universities in India, followed by his PhD in protein fold and unfolding kinetics from the National Centre for Biological Science (NCBS-TIFR) in Bangalore, India. He did his postdoctoral research with Enrico Coen at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK on the role of the CINCINNATA gene in regulating leaf surface curvature in snapdragon. He joined the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore as an assistant professor in 2002, and has been there since, where he is currently a professor. As an independent PI, his group has been working on plant growth and development by forward and reverse genetics in Arabidopsis for the past 23 years, and has isolated many mutants with altered organ growth, shape, and size. More recently, his group has been interested in studying the growth dynamics of diverse organs including cotyledons, leaves, sepals and petals using fluorescent live imaging followed by MorphoGraphX analysis, and mechanical conflict resolution in generating robust organ shape.

Utpal will attend New Phytologist next generation scientist 2026 on day 1 and day 2.