Professor Ashok Venkitaraman

Professor Ashok Venkitaraman is the Chief Scientist, Biomedical Research Council, at A*STAR, and an internationally recognised clinician-scientist. He is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cancer Science Institute at the National University of Singapore, Research Director at A*STAR Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (A*STAR IMCB), and Executive Director of the National Initiative for RNA Biology and its Applications (NIRBA), for the National Research Foundation (NRF), Singapore.

Ashok previously held the Ursula Zoellner Professorship of Cancer Research at the University of Cambridge (1998-2020), and was the Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cancer Unit there (2006-2019).

Ashok learnt and practiced medicine at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, later earning his PhD in immunology at University College London with Sir Marc Feldman. He joined Michael Neuberger at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge as a Beit Memorial Fellow, before rising to become a group leader there.

Ashok is recognised for elucidating how a class of human genes exemplified by the inherited breast cancer gene, BRCA2, protects the integrity of our genome to prevent carcinogenesis. His laboratory is best known for their discovery of the biological functions of BRCA2 and related tumour suppressors, which has opened fundamental insights into the mechanisms that repair, replicate and segregate the genetic information encoded in our genome, and laid the scientific foundations for approaches to targeted cancer therapies.

To translate their discoveries to health and economic impact, Ashok's laboratory has developed innovative technologies for the discovery and early development of new drugs, which has led to the serial spin-out of companies from Cambridge University, including PhoreMost, as a co-founder.

Ashok has mentored numerous PhD students or postdoctoral fellows, several of whom are distinguished clinicians and scientists now holding leadership positions in academia and industry across the UK, USA and Singapore.

Ashok has received numerous accolades for his research, including his election to the Academy of Medical Sciences, London (2001), the EMBO Academy, Heidelberg (2004), and the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research (2025).