Classmates and teachers of the Guntur-based Indian-American professor Podila Gopi Kumar, who was shot dead in the U.S. on Friday evening, are in a state of shock.
The 52-year-old professor and chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama, had visited India a month ago after his father P. Surya Prakasa Rao (83) died on December 11, 2009. His mother Ramalakshmi (80) now lives with her son in Chittoor.
A bright student, Gopi Kumar had done considerable work in fungal genomics, his classmate and friend K.R.S. Sambasiva Rao, heading the Centre for Biotechnology in Acharya Nagarjuna University, told
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He was an alumnus of the Hindu College in Guntur where he completed his B.Sc. (Botany) in 1977 and went on to do post-graduation in Botany on the ANU Campus in 1979, when his father headed the department.
Gopi Kumar registered himself as a research fellow in Andhra University's Botany Department during 1979-80 when he left for the United States on getting a post-graduate seat there, said his senior M. Vijayalakshmi, who is a professor in the Botany Department.
Professor N. Lakshmi, working in a college in Vijayawada, said she had worked with late Prakasa Rao and was shocked to know that both father and son had died in a short span of time. Gopi Kumar is the last of four siblings and the other three brothers are settled at Bhilai, Pune and Chittoor. The Indian professor earned a good name in academic circles as he had written several authoritative books.
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