Dr. Raghunath A. Mashelkar is a globally preeminent chemical engineer and a strategic visionary best known as the former Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India’s largest R&D organization. His career is defined by transforming the institutional culture of Indian science from “publish or perish” to “patent, publish, and prosper,” and by successfully defending India’s intellectual property rights globally, establishing him as a world authority on innovation and traditional knowledge.
Mashelkar led the fundamental transformation of CSIR from 1995 to 2006, shifting its focus from import substitution to a revenue-generating model centered on patenting, licensing, and consulting. This transformative process was heralded as one of the ten most significant achievements of Indian Science and Technology in the 20th century. His commitment to blending science and industry led to him being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) and receiving the JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award in the same year (1998).
His most high-impact contribution lies in his defense of Indian intellectual property and traditional knowledge. He successfully led the legal battle to revoke a US patent on turmeric’s wound-healing properties, arguing it was prior knowledge. This led to his leadership role at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the creation of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), which digitized ancient texts to prevent the grant of wrong patents. He pioneered the concept of “Gandhian Engineering”—Getting More from Less for More People.
As a speaker and advisor, the Padma Vibhushan and Bhatnagar Prize awardee draws on his vast experience to advise boards of major companies like Tata Motors, Thermax, and Reliance Industries. He focuses on overcoming challenges like limited access to foreign exchange in a pre-liberalized India, providing ambitious insights into how investment in Indian scientific research has a comparatively high yield per-dollar, and how to merge ancient wisdom with modern science to prompt new drug developments and therapies.
