Dr. Abhay Jere is the Chief Innovation Officer for Ministry of HRD, Govt. of India. Before joining MHRD, Dr. Jere was Chief Scientist- Life Sciences and R&D Head for Persistent Systems Ltd.
As Chief Innovation Officer, Dr. Jere is responsible for promoting all innovation related initiatives in higher education institutions. He is also the brain and driving force behind MHRD’s Smart India Hackathon initiative which is now recognized as world’s biggest open innovation model with participation from thousands of education institutions, lakhs of students and hundreds of industries.
Dr. Jere is instrumental in conceptualizing first of its’ kind Atal Innovation Ranking framework (ARIIA) for ranking all education institutions on innovation achievements
Through MHRD, Dr. Jere has now established Institution’s Innovation Councils (IIC) across 1000 institutions to facilitate creation of local innovation ecosystems in these institutions.
Under guidance of Dr. Jere, MHRD is conceptualizing Student’s Startup policy, which will now allow students to start their own start-ups while studying. Recently, he was also instrumental in conceiving a very unique MBA program in ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship’ announced by All India Council for Technical education (AICTE).
Dr. Jere is committed to popularize need of innovation and entrepreneurship amongst Indians, hence he routinely writes columns in renowned English and vernacular newspaper. He has also conceptualized ‘India First Leadership Talk Series’, which is telecasted on Lok Sabha TV.
Dr. Jere has rich international experience having worked in the US, Japan, Europe. He brings in extensive research experience in cutting edge areas such as personalized medicine, personalized genomic and keen on contributing for achieving the Universal Health care for Indians. As a Principal Investigator, Dr. Jere has received multiple research grants from prestigious government funding agencies like CSIR, DBT, etc.
Dr. Jere has also participated in various international life science events and meetings and has also published more than 20 research papers in very prestigious international journals and contributed to multiple book chapters. He also guides Ph.D. and Master students for their thesis.
Dr. Jere completed his Ph.D from National AIDS Research Institute (NARI), Pune and was part of India’s HIV vaccine team. He also worked as post-doctoral scientist at National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of Health (NIH), USA before coming back to India.
