CEO Insights Magazine, a noted print and digital business magazine in India, has recently featured Dr. Gururaj Guddappa Kulkarni of the International Rice Research Institute as one of its Top 10 Indian Leaders in the Philippines for 2022.

The annual recognition showcases Indian-origin leaders in the Philippines who guide the country’s business landscape by setting benchmarks across several key parameters.

Dr. Kulkarni is an IRRI senior scientist and serves as the first Director of the Bio-Innovation Center (BIC). BIC is a membership-based initiative that allows private and public sector partners to leverage IRRI's world-class research infrastructure, expertise, and resources for the development or scaling up of their own products or research solutions. IRRI established the BIC initiative to nurture technology and knowledge-based agri-enterprises, foster innovation, research, and entrepreneurial activities in the rice sector, and strengthen its collaboration with the private-public sectors, its key partners in food and nutrition security.

“‘Partnership for Prosperity’ is the mission of this initiative,” said Dr. Kulkarni. “The Bio-Innovation Center is a new research collaboration opportunity for public and private partners with IRRI, using the institute’s resources and expertise to fast track their research on product development and solutions to new challenges. There are already members from the public and private sector who have signed with IRRI under this umbrella and initiated their research activities.”

Aside from being the director of BIC, Dr. Kulkarni is also IRRI’s Global Head of Research Infrastructure and Regulatory Compliance. Recently he was also given the additional roles of the Integrative Research Support Platform representative for South Asia, and the representative nominee in the CG-Policy Platform working group that oversees the International policies and regulations with FAO, IPPC, ISTA, ISF, etc.