Our research areas focus on a variety of bioinformatics topics but basic themes includes evolution, comparative genomics, system biology as well as functional genomics.

Within this field we are focusing on the major topics:

A)  Artificial intelligence for drug discovery from Himalayas for human health

B)  Artificial intelligence for host-pathogen interactions

C) Artificial intelligence in imaging for stroke diagnosis

d) Artificial intelligence in plant imaging solutions (stomata detection)

 Further details are provided with the link http://fgcsl.ihbt.res.in/fgcsl/research.php

National Awards

1.  Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) Young Scientist Award -2014 (New Biology)  @ 101^st Indian Science Congress @ University of Jammu during 3 -7 Feb, 2014.

2.  Young Scientist Award for Best Paper Presentation by Society of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology, New Delhi @ G.B. Pant University of  Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, 4-6 March, 2014

3.  Part of Bioinformatics Team @ CSIR-IHBT for 2^nd Position – “Incentive Awards for Publications-2015” under Bioinformatics Infrastructure Facility (BIF), Biotechnology Information System Network (BTISNet), Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (including my 5 out of total 8 papers).

4. Bagged Bioclues Research and innovation award (BIRD)-2016 for outstanding contribution in the field of Bioinformatics and Functional genomics under the age of 35. This award is given by BIOCLUES Organisation, an affiliate of International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB) and Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (Award Link)

5. Elected as "Associate" of National Academy of Agriculture Sciences (NAAS) under Social Sciences (Bioinformatics)-2021 [Link]
   

Honours 

• Selected as Joint Secretary/ Co-Chair of Bioclues organization (an affiliate of International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB)) for the year 2017-2018.

• Invited speaker & Chairperson for the "International Conference on Bioinformatics" held at Hans Raj Mahavidalaya (HMV), Jalandhar, 2019.

• As a Co-co-ordinator for “Establishment of Bioinformatics infrastructure for biology through bioinformatics (BTBI) under BTISnet”, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India.

• AI-based software “Hansa” has been selected and highlighted in annual virtual issue of Human Mutation entitled "Evaluating Mutation Pathogenicity" for the year 2012 with the [link]

• The National Genetics Reference Laboratory (NGRL), Manchester, UK, on analyzing popular missense prediction tools advised usage of “Hansa” as one of the three tools, thus emphasizing the importance of this software that will be highly beneficial to the interested biological community with the [link]

 Academic Achievements

1. All India Combined Examination for ICAR’s JRF, 2003-2004.
2. Department of Biotechnology Fellow (DBT-Fellow) (2003) for M.Sc. through All India JNU Entrance Exam conducted by Jawaharlal Nehru University -2003
3. Junior Research Fellow (2005) for Ph.D. granted by Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
4. Travel fellowship awarded by European Science Foundation, Dresden,Germany, 14^th-17^th April 2010.

   For more information, please see the linkhttp://fgcsl.ihbt.res.in/fgcsl/people.php
   

Selected Publications:

1. Ruhika Sharma, Vishal Acharya* (2025) Lightweight Vision Transformer with Transfer Learning for Interpretable Alzheimer's Disease Severity Assessment Scientific Reports 15, Article number: 44028.
2. Nymphaea Arora, Anil Kumar Rana, Damanpreet Singh*, Vishal Acharya* (2025) Differential Roles of Neuro-Inflammatory Regulator, MAPK11 in Cortex and Hippocampus Following Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairments in Rats Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology 20, 93
3. Neeraj Kumar, Vishal Acharya*, (2024) Advances in machine intelligence-driven virtual screening approaches for big-data. Medicinal Research Reviews, 44:939-974 | doi: 10.1002/med.21995.
4. Ravi Kumar, Vishal Acharya*, Effector protein structures: a tale of evolutionary relationship, Trends in Plant Science, 2023,ISSN 1360-1385.
5. Meetal Sharma, Prince Anand, Yogender Padwad, Vivek Dogra, Vishal Acharya* DNA damage response proteins synergistically affect the cancer prognosis and resistance Free Radical Biology & Medicine 2021 Nov 27;S0891-5849 (21) 00831-5.
6. Ravi Kumar, Abhishek Khatri & Vishal Acharya* Deep learning uncovers distinct behavior of rice network to pathogens response iScience, Volume 25, Issue 7, 104546 
7. Neeraj Kumar, Vishal Acharya*, Machine intelligence-guided selection of optimized inhibitor for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from natural products. Computers in Biology and Medicine Volume 153, February 2023, 106525 
8. Neeraj Kumar & Vishal Acharya*   Machine intelligence-driven framework for optimized hit selection in virtual screening. Journal of Cheminformatics 2022 Jul 22;14(1):48. doi: 10.1186/s13321-022-00630-7. PMID: 35869511; PMCID: PMC9306080    Details of Publications is provided at the link: http://fgcsl.ihbt.res.in/fgcsl/publication.php Link for repostiores(software/database) is provided: http://fgcsl.ihbt.res.in/fgcsl/tools.php

A) Registered PhD Students

1. Dipali Bhatia

2. Jatin Kaushik

3. Kritika Sharma

4. Vikrant Gautam (CSIR employee STO)

Research Scholars

1. Krishna Gill (IIT-Mandi iHub& HCI Foundation Project)

Startup incubatee

1. Aakarshan Rehan (Nov 2023)

Alumni

(Past PhD Scholars)

1. Dr. Vinay Randhawa (Defended Thesis, 2016)

2. Dr. Preeti Arya (Defended Thesis, 2017)

3.Dr. Narendra Tripude (Defended Thesis, 2021)

4. Dr. Neeraj Kumar (Defended Thesis, 2023)

5. Dr. Meetal Sharma (Defended Thesis, 2023)

6. Dr. Ravi Kumar (Defended Thesis, 2025)

7. Eng. Ruhika Sharma (Thesis submitted, 2026)

8. Nymphaea Arora (Thesis submitted, 2026)

9. Ekjot Kaur (Thesis submitted, 2026)

Past Research fellow

1. Abhishek Khatri (2018-2022)

2. Kanika Chauhan (2024-2026)

For more information, please see the link: https://fgcsl.ihbt.res.in/fgcsl/people.php