Veronica Rodrigues

Veronica Filomena Rodrigues (1953–2010) was a Kenyan born Indian biologist. Veronica completed a B.A with honors in microbiology from Trinity College Dublin. After being inspired by the work of Obaid Siddiqi and his co-workers, she moved to India to pursue her Ph.D. While doing her PhD, considering her exceptional work, she was offered a permanent faculty position at TIFR. She also served as a senior professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. In 2004 she received the Senior National Woman Bioscientist Award. She died in 2010 after suffering from breast cancer for five years. Veronica was born in a Goan immigrant family living in Nairobi, Kenya in 1953. She completed her school education in Nairobi and then entered Makerere University in Kampala for higher education but due to turmoil in the region moved to Trinity College Dublin. Veronica had to leave Makerere University in Uganda owing to turmoil in the country. She eventually ended up getting a scholarship to study at Trinity College Dublin. She obtained a B.A. with Honours in Microbiology in 1976. She moved to India to pursue her PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai in 1977 under the supervision of Dr Obaid Siddiqi. Veronica describes why she decided to come to TIFR for her PhD: In our microbiology course at Trinity we were taught the paper of Sarathy and Siddiqi in J. Molecular Biology on bacterial recombination. I was really impressed by the elegance of the paper.... Before reading the paper, I had never heard of TIFR, nor did I seriously think of returning to India. Actually, I didn’t even think there was much science going on in India. I actually thought the PI was Sarathy and wrote to him. I was very impressed by the ‘Indians’ when I got a letter from Siddiqi, fairly promptly and the letter seemed positive. I remember talking to my teachers and friends in Ireland and we were very impressed that my admission could be discussed as Prof Siddiqi said (among his colleagues) with no red tape and necessity for interview etc.