Dr.M.Rajasekhar, MVSc, FRVAC (Den), PhD (Edin) 

Dr. M. Rajasekhar, Founder Project Director (retired on 30th September 2002), Project Directorate on Animal Disease Monitoring And Surveillance (PD_ADMAS), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Hebbal, Bangalore 560 024, India, is a well-known veterinary microbiologist, both in India and abroad. 

Dr. M. Rajasekhar was born on 6th Feb 1943 as the second son to late Gangamma (mother) and late Malleshappa (father) in a small village called Abbinahole, Hiriyur taluk, Chitradurga district, Karnataka state. His parents originally hailed from Anantpur district in Andhra Pradesh. Due hardship following death of his elder brother and father he moved to Bangalore city in 1956 to pursue his education - supported by his uncle, late C.L.Thippeswamy.

He graduated (BVSc) from Veterinary College, University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bangalore in 1966 securing first rank and was awarded four gold medals. He completed MVSc degree veterinary microbiology at the same college in 1968, again securing first rank and received the Commonwealth Animal Health Prize instituted by CAB, UK. 

After a brief work at National Dairy Research Institute, Bangalore, he joined the Dept of Vet Microbiology, Veterinary College, Bangalore in 1969 and rose to the position of Associate Professor of Microbiology in 1981. During this tenure there, he held a FAO-Danish Government Fellowship (1972) for specialization in Bacteriology and Food Hygiene at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural College, Copenhagen, Denmark and later in 1987, the Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship for PhD in Bacteriology at the Royal (Dick) Veterinary School. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. For a brief period in 1993, he was a Visiting Associate Professor of Microbiology at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St.Paul, Minnesota, USA. He had the opportunity to work in several European and American Veterinary Intuitions in the past. 

To pursue his craving for an active research career, he moved out of UAS, Bangalore to ICAR service in1987 as Project Co-ordinator to initiate an All India Co-ordinated Research Project on Animal Disease Monitoring And Surveillance (AICRP_ADMAS) - a multi centre programme. This was the most challenging job to start from scrap to build it up to the status of a national Institution of Project Directorate (PD_ADMAS) in a short period of 13 years. 

As the Founder Project Director of ADMAS, he successfully converged his dynamic leadership, commitment, vision and scientific acumen to establish one of the best-equipped and high performance veterinary laboratory facilities in India. He attributes this astounding success to the untiring 'team work' of his dedicated and hard working veterinarians - Drs. Gangadhar, Sudhindra, Yathinder, Suresh Belliappa, Renukaradhya, Sri Krishna Isloor and Sudarshana along with Mr. Mukund (Bio-statistician), whom he was privileged to hand pick from the state Dept of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services, Govt of Karnataka, and he molded them into scientists of par excellence. 

This was amply justified during mid 2002 when PD_ADMAS was declared as the best ICAR Institution (Sardar Patel award) and also its scientists received the "ICAR Outstanding Research Team Award". Yet another achievement is the "Biotech Product and Process Development Award - 2002" by the Dept of Biotechnology, Govt of India in recognition of PD_ADMAS contribution for indigenously developing international quality software based ELISA diagnostic kits for livestock diseases. His team has also developed india.admasEpitrak, exclusive veterinary epidemiology software for Indian livestock disease scenario. FAO, Rome has appreciated good features of this Epi-software. 

Added to all these, Dr.Rajasekhar was aptly rewarded on 26th May 2002 with the most coved OIE Meritorious Award - 2002, as a token of international recognition of his research and professional contributions by the Office des International Epizooties, Paris.

Dr. Rajasekhar's long-standing expertise in rinderpest research was rightly utilized since 1991 by the then European Union supported Govt of India Programme on "National Project on Rinderpest Eradication (NPRE). He was the head of the National rinderpest ELISA laboratory facility attached to PD_ADMAS and managed the national network of 32 state level rinderpest labs. The national serum bank facility, with more than 60,000 serum samples, which he established as a part of NPRE activity, is indeed the first of its kind in the country and has helped to undertake time and location specific retrospective sero-epidemiological studies of livestock diseases. He is proud that the scientists of PD_ADMAS have richly contributed to this national effort to free the country of rinderpest since 1995.

Dr. Rajasekhar has richly contributed to our understanding of bovine brucellosis, leptospirosis, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, rinderpest and Peste des petites ruminants and the epidemiology of several other diseases. He, for the first time in the country, successfully developed international quality software based ELISA diagnostic kits that are well accepted and used in several state disease investigation labs. He also served as the Mission Leader of two animal health related National Agriculture Technology Programme of ICAR with most veterinary colleges and ICAR research institutions as collaborating centres. He has guided several research students and has more than 65 publications - two of which have won medals.

On the basic veterinary services front, Dr.Rajasekhar was a leading large animal practitioner in the early part of his career and was also associated with equine laboratory practice at Bangalore Turf club. He and his wife, Mrs. Uma Rajasekhar, were the first to set up their own private diagnostic laboratory for racehorses in 1985 in Bangalore. He was declared as the "Best Veterinarian of the Year -1991" by the Karnataka Veterinary Association, Bangalore. 

Dr. Rajasekhar is married to Uma, daughter of late Prof and Mrs. K.N.Narayan, Professor of Botany, University of Mysore, Mysore. They are blessed with two daughters - elder daughter, Mamata and her husband Rakesh are settled in Canada and the younger daughter, Mridul, lives in USA. They have a grand daughter, Keerthi, 4yr, from Mamata and Rakesh. Mridul is an accomplished Indian classical Bharatanatyam dancer.

The saying that - 'a true professional never retires' - is aptly true with Dr. Rajasekhar, who just in a matter of three months after his retirement, has launched an unique professional website www.indiaveterinarycommunity.com on the New Year day of 2003. Through this cyberspace window, he is determined to project the Indian veterinarian and his noble profession in all its facets and to prepare ourselves to the challenges of the 21st century. He hopes someday it will grow to be the 'global veterinary community'.

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