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UChicago to honor Shankar Balasubramanian at 2026 convocation
Balasubramanian will be among three scholars receiving honorary degrees during the university’s June 6 ceremony.
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Malvika Choudhary - Wed, 04, Mar 2026
- 15:22 EST
- 22
Shankar Balasubramanian / cruk.cam.ac.uk
The University of Chicago will award an honorary doctor of science degree to British Indian chemist Shankar Balasubramanian during its 2026 convocation ceremony on June 6.
Balasubramanian, the Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, was recognized for his work in nucleic acid chemistry and for co-inventing a DNA sequencing technology that transformed genomic research and medical diagnostics.
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A senior group leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, Balasubramanian studies the chemistry, structure and function of nucleic acids. Along with fellow scientist David Klenerman, he developed the DNA sequencing technology Solexa, now commercialized by Illumina.
The method enabled rapid, low-cost sequencing of human genomes and became widely used in biological research and clinical medicine.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the sequencing technology played a key role in identifying the genome of SARS‑CoV‑2, tracking emerging variants and informing updates to vaccines.
Balasubramanian has also made contributions to the study of unusual DNA structures and nucleic acids that have helped advance research into new therapeutic approaches.
He was knighted in 2017 and has received several major scientific honors, including the Royal Medal from the Royal Society, the Millennium Technology Prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Novo Nordisk Award and the Canada Gairdner International Prize in Life Sciences.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society, an international member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Born in Madras, now Chennai, India, in 1966, Balasubramanian moved to the United Kingdom with his family in 1967. He studied natural sciences at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he completed his undergraduate degree and later earned a doctorate in chemistry.
After postdoctoral research at Pennsylvania State University, he began his independent academic career at Cambridge in 1994.
The university will also award honorary degrees at the ceremony to economist and legal scholar Louis Kaplow and historian and archaeologist Greg Woolf.
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