London, Dec. 31: Shankar Balasubramanian, an Indian origin scientist at Cambridge University, has been knighted "for services to Science and Medicine" in the New Year's Honours, it was announced today.

Sir Shankar, as he will now be addressed, was born in Chennai on September 30, 1966, and brought to the UK by his parents in 1967.

He went to school in Cheshire, and read Natural Sciences and did his PhD at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (where Netaji Subhas Bose had once been an undergraduate).

Balasubramanian is now the Herchel Smith professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Speaking from Australia, where he is on holiday with his family, Balasubramanian told The Telegraph that his Indian links remained important to him.

"My extended family is still largely based in South India and both I and my immediate UK-based family will continue to maintain those connections by regular visits," he pledged.

"India has a great scientific history and I look forward to maintaining my scientific friendships and connections in the Indian system," he added.

The honour bestowed on Balasubramanian was welcomed by his friends, among them Yusuf Hamied, the head of Cipla who said he was thrilled by this "fantastic news", and the chemistry Nobel Laureate, Prof. Venkatraman ("Venki") Ramakrishnan, who is also a Fellow of Trinity (as is economist Amartya Sen).

Venki, who was also born in Tamil Nadu and was knighted in 2012 - three years after his Nobel for his work on Ribosomes - paid tribute to Balasubramanian: "Shankar has made brilliant contributions both to fundamental biochemistry and to revolutionising DNA sequencing through his contributions to next-generation methods and their commercialisation. It is a very well-deserved honour of which Cambridge should be proud."

Balasubramanian's website states: "Nucleic acids are fundamental to life. Our research is focused on the chemical biology of nucleic acids, and employs the principles of chemistry and the molecular sciences to address questions of importance in biology and medicine.

"Projects are inherently interdisciplinary and will provide scope for a diversity of intellectual and experimental approaches that include: organic synthesis, biophysics, molecular and cellular biology and genomics. Our scientific goals are problem-driven, which constantly raises the need to invent new methodology."

Balasubramanian explained his research to The Telegraph: "DNA and its functions are fundamental to all living systems both in normal function and also in many disease states. The basic double-helix structure of DNA has been known for decades along with the primary code stored within it.

"In particular, there are properties of DNA that are changeable and can alter the character of cells or organisms. My current interests focus on exploring structures and chemical changes that naturally occur to DNA in humans and other organisms.

"It is key to understand what the changes are, how they occur and how they affect the development and maintenance of healthy organisms and sometimes go 'wrong' in disease states such as cancers. It is clear that DNA is a far more interesting and mysterious molecule than was earlier thought."

Among the 22 other people named "Knights Bachelor" today are four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah, who arrived from Somalia as a small boy unable to speak English; the tennis world number one Andy Murray; the war photographer Donald McCullin; and the actor Mark Rylance.

Of equal rank in the honours system, Anna Wintour, the longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, is elevated to DBE (Dame of the British Empire) for "services to fashion and journalism".

"She is associated with Meryl Streep's character in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, based on the book of the same name by Lauren Weisberger, a former assistant to Dame Anna," the Financial Times pointed out.

Lower down the honours system, footballer David Beckham's wife, Victoria ("Posh") - formerly with The Spice Girls, she turned designer - gets an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for her contribution to the fashion industry.