How far we can go with our scientific knowledge to defy health issues?. Dr. Suman Sahai, a distinguished geneticist is addressing the issues relating to livelihoods, food and nutrition. As a founder chairperson of her organisation – Gene Campaign, she targets research and organisational policies. She is a recipient of the Padma Shri award (2011), besides this, she has her name on one of the most prestigious awards in international agriculture research; Borlaug Award.

Dr. Sahai has written almost 40 articles, where her publication’s focus on science policy, food security issues, and agricultural biotechnology and Genetically modified organisms (GMO). After earning her PhD from India in 1975, she did her habilitation in human genetics from Heidelberg during the 80s. Following this, she served as a faculty member in the University of Alberta, Chicago and Heidelberg.

A powerful flow of confidence runs in her. On her return to India, she founded the NGO – Gene Campaign, dedicated to protecting farmers’ rights including food and security. Gene Campaign is working on bioresources, farmer’s community rights, indigenous knowledge, biopiracy and regulations of GMOs. Besides these, the impact of climate on agriculture is also one such target.

Dr. Sahai is a proud member of several policy forums and intellectual property rights and research, she has served on the research advisory committees of national scientific institutions. In recent years she published articles that are based on the impact of climate change which can be found here.

Undoubtedly she is a brilliant scientist, there exist some spots in her career. In the year 2012, an anonymous email dropped some serious allegations on her habilitation work of alleged plagiarism (Heidelberg). This was later confirmed by the committee. In addition, her Curriculum Vitae shows her as a Professor at University of Heidelberg, which was not true. This issue was also scrutinised and the University of Heidelberg came up with a press release mentioning Dr. Sahai has never held a professorship at the university. As a consequence, Dr. Sahai had to return her teaching certificate ” venia legendi” in 2012. More details are here.

Nevertheless, her devotion to agricultural research and campaign is helping millions of farmers in India. We require more and more women scientists in this field.