Dr. Shanthu Shantharam was the President of Biologistics International (www.biologistics.us), a biotech management and consulting company in the USA, and a former senior research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Institute of International Affairs and Public Policy’s Science, Technology, and Environment Program at Princeton University.  Dr. Shantharam has over 25 years of experience as a scientist (molecular biologist and biotechnologist).  He served as a Branch Chief of the USDA office of Biotechnology Regulatory Services in Washington DC for over 14 years, and worked as a visiting biotechnology advisor to the World Bank in the mid 1990s.  He was a visiting research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC from 2001 to 2002.  He was Head of Technology Communications for Syngenta International in Basel, Switzerland and was also Global Head of their Regulatory Compliance Unit.  Some of his clients in the area of biotechnology and biosafety are US-AID, UN-FAO, UNIDO, UNEP-GEF, and ADB.  He presently directs a program on biotechnology management courses at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok. Dr. Shantharam is veteran biotechnology regulatory affairs expert, biosafety analyst, and a risk assessment specialist. 

Dr. Shantharam obtained B.Sc (Hons) from Bangalore University (1972); M.Sc (Plant Physiology) from the MS University of Baroda (1974); and a Ph.D in Microbiology from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada (1980).  He carried out post-doctoral research at Kansas State University, Iowa State University, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, and was an EMBO trainee at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Dr. Shantharam received a Fulbright Fellowship 1994.