Pawan K. AgrawalProfessor

Professor Krishna’s interest in NMR spectroscopy started in 1966 when he was admitted to the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur in India as a graduate student. Many of us are aware of some of his significant original NMR research contributions over the years, both in chemical physics (such as the density matrix description of intermolecular solvent-solute nuclear Overhauser effects [NOEs], equivalence issues between the continuous wave NMR and the Fourier Transform NMR, etc.), and in biomolecular NMR such as the development of the NOE R-factor to compare the experimental NOEs with those calculated for various models of peptides and proteins, the relaxation rate matrix method for refining the structures of peptides and proteins including NOE intensity-restrained optimization of structures, methods for refining the structures of protein-ligand complexes such as CORCEMA for tr-NOESY analysis and CORCEMA-ST for STD-NMR analysis, as well as his many contributions in protein structural biology (e.g., studies on scorpion neurotoxins active on sodium channels, proteins from bacteriophage P22 and HIV-1, etc.). In 2012, Dr Krishna was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) by his peers in recognition of his significant contributions to the development of novel NMR techniques useful in protein structural studies and drug discovery, and for his work in protein structural biology. Professor Rama Krishna has authored more than 130 publications, including invited reviews and book chapters. He also served as the invited Guest Editor for volumes 16 (Modern Techniques in Protein NMR), 17 (Structure Computation and Dynamics in Protein NMR), and 20 (Protein NMR for the Millennium) of the Biological Magnetic Resonance special topics book series (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers), all focusing on the latest developments in biomolecular NMR spectroscopy.