Jyoti Prakash Tamang was born on 16 November 1961 in the mountain district of Darjeeling in the Indian state of West Bengal from Nepali parents. He completed his schooling at Turnbull High School, Darjeeling in 1977 and his pre-university course at the St Joseph's College, Darjeeling in 1979. His undergraduate education was at the Darjeeling Government College of North Bengal University from where he passed B.Sc. honors in 1982 and continued at the institution to earn an M.Sc. in microbiology in 1984, passing the examination winning a gold medal for academic excellence. He started his career in 1986 as an associate professor at the department of botany of Sikkim Government College, Tadong where he worked until 2011. Simultaneously, he enrolled at North Bengal University for his doctoral studies and after securing a PhD in microbiology in 1992, he did his post-doctoral work at two institutions abroad during 1994–95; first at the National Food Research Institute, Tsukuba with a fellowship from the United Nations University-Kirin Brewery Company and, later, at the Institute of Hygiene and Toxicology, Karlsruhe, on a fellowship received from Volkswagen Foundation. In 2011, he joined Central Sikkim University as a member of faculty and has been serving the institution since then. He has held various positions at the university which included those of an academic coordinator, the dean of the School of Life Sciences, the registrar and a professor. He also serves as the officiating vice chancellor of the university. In between, he had a short stint at the Research Institute of Humanity and Nature of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Kyoto as a visiting professor during 2009–10.
Legacy
Tamang focused his research on the culture, microbiology, nutrition, and functional property of food and is known to be an expert on fermented food in use across the world. He is reported to have identified the probiotic and functional properties of fermented food found in the Himalayan region and has studied its microbial diversity. His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 36 of them. Besides, he has published four books namely, Himalayan Fermented Foods: Microbiology, Nutrition, and Ethnic Values, Ethnic fermented foods and alcoholic beverages of Asia, Fermented foods and beverages of the world and Health benefits of fermented foods and beverages.
Awards and honors
Tamang received the Women's Association Award of the United Nations University in 1996. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2004. He was elected as a fellow by the Biotech Research Society of India in 2006 and he received the Gourmand World Cookbook Award in 2010; the same year as he received the elected fellowship of the Indian Academy of Microbiological Sciences. The elected fellowship of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences reached him in 2016.
