Professor Prashant Mali
Dual Degree 2003, Electrical Engineering

Prof. Prashant Mali is Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego, USA.

Prof. Mali obtained his dual degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2003. His research focused on biomedical sensors. He earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, USA with a research focus on pluripotent stem cell biology and engineering. During his postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Genetics at the Harvard Medical School, he pioneered the development of the CRISPR-Cas systems for eukaryotic genome engineering.

He is currently a faculty in Bioengineering at UCSD. His lab research approach is curiosity-driven, and passionate about understanding and progressively engineering biology towards enabling gene & cell based human therapeutics.

In 2016, Prof. Mali was awarded Frontiers of Science Fellow by Kavli Foundation; Kimmel Scholar Award by Sidney Kimmel Foundation and Basil O’Connor Scholar Award by March of Dimes Foundation. He has also received Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface in 2014. Prof. Mali et al. Science 2013 was Genome Advance of the Month, National Human Genome Research Institute. Science recognized the CRISPR-Cas9 system as one of the leading scientific breakthroughs of 2013. He has received Siebel Scholar, Class of 2011 and Dhirubhai Ambani Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship in 1998.


Special Memories

“I think its fair to say that for a lot of us, “IITB was indeed where it all started... ” The friendships and interactions there were crucial to shaping my outlook and future pursuits started here. In particular, I am deeply thankful to my undergraduate thesis advisor, Professor Rakesh Lal, who ushered me not just into the world of science and research but also into one where the ideal was pursuing ‘ideas’. “