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The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology is arguably the most coveted science award in India. Named after the founding director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the late Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, the annual prize was awarded for the first time in 1958.
The award is open to any Indian citizen under the age of 45 and conducting research in any of the following seven disciplines: Biological Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences, Science of Science. engineer, mathematical sciences, medical sciences. and physical sciences. Each discipline can have up to two winners. The award is based primarily on research conducted in India over the past five years and comes with a cash prize of 5 lakhs.
The work of this year's laureates ranges from research on DNA damage and the repair of nanomotor drugs to CO2 capture and storage. Mirror spoke to 11 of 13 recipients (two of whom were abroad) to learn more about what's happening at the cutting edge of science in India.
Swadhin Kumar
Mandal, 44 years old
Department of Chemical Sciences, IISER-Kolkata
Research Area: Sustainable Chemical Process Development
"Any material, drug or synthetic fuel involves chemistry, especially chemical synthesis. To facilitate such a process, you need a catalyst and they are mainly heavy metal based, "says Dr. Swadhin Mandal. Dr. Mandal's work focuses on the development of non-toxic catalysts for various industrially important processes and how they can be used effectively in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. His work has shown how greenhouse gases such as CO2, which are primarily responsible for global warming, can be converted to alternative fuels such as methanol under ambient conditions without the use of metal catalysts. "Such a process can reduce the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and can turn it into a valuable product," says Dr. Mandal.
Dr. Parthasarathi Chakraborty, 44 years old
National Institute of Oceanography, Goa
Research Area: Metal Binding Ligands in Ocean Biogeochemistry
The work of Dr. Parthasarathi Chakraborty is to try to understand how traces of metal in the marine ecosystem affect its carbon cycles. According to the NIO, to which Dr. Chakraborty joined in 2008, he "launched a study on metal speciation (after the creation of the first metal speciation laboratory in India …) to understand the important role of natural metal-ligand interactions. in the control of distribution, destiny and mobility. and the bioavailability of trace / heavy metals in marine environments (estuarine, coastal, and large oceans). "The results of Chakraborty's research have been published in 58 leading national and international journals and earned him a place as a member. Associate, in the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research Working Groups – a global body working to address "interdisciplinary scientific issues about the ocean".
Dr. Amit Agrawal, 44,
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT-Bombay
Research Interests: Micro-devices and Fluid Dynamics
Dr. Amit Agrawal is working to create next-generation diagnostic microdisorders that will bring the hospital to the patient. "These should duplicate exactly what the corresponding tools can do in the labs," he says. One of the devices that he has created allows the plasma to be extracted from the blood so that it can be used for further processing. The device has the size of a room. Agrawal was also commended for looking beyond the Navier-Stokes equations, which have been used for nearly two centuries to describe fluid flow, even though they do not work very well in all situations – as in the case of 39, aircraft flying at very low altitude. high altitude. "We have sought solutions beyond Navier-Stokes and proposed our own equations – which we are currently testing. This could open the door to solving many problems of fluid flow, "says Agrawal.
Ganesh Nagaraju, 45,
Associate Professor of Biochemistry, IISc-Bengaluru
Research Area: DNA Damage and Repair Pathways
From the way in which idlis is metabolized in our stomach to the way diabetes weakens our organs, biochemistry can respond to everything that concerns the human body. And Ganesh Nagaraju, a veteran of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, is pushing the boundaries of biochemistry to save lives from cancer, fanconi anemia and many other genetic diseases. Nagaraju says that the body has its own mechanism for repairing damage to DNA in order to verify the genetic mutation. "We want to understand the molecular mechanisms of response to DNA damage, repair pathways and chromosomal instability associated with genetic diseases and cancer." The Nagaraju laboratory focuses on repairing double-stranded DNA breaks, considered the most dangerous of all. Damage to the DNA. In 2016, his team was able to make a giant leap. They developed an anti-cancer agent with the chemistry department. "We are now looking to study this molecule at the next level, using a mouse model system," he says.
Thomas Pucadyil, 42 years old
Indian Institute of Teaching and Scientific Research, Pune
Research field: biological sciences
Cell biologist Thomas Pucadyil has conducted research on the recreation of cell membrane systems and their division. "The process of cutting the membrane in two is known as membrane fission. It's like ice cream on a stick. You can not hold the stick and take it out of the ice cream – all the ice cream is coming. This is essentially the same problem with membrane proteins. If you shoot the protein, the entire membrane bends. The only way to transport these proteins is to let the membrane bend and cut the neck of the membrane, "explains Pucadyil, describing the mechanism by which proteins are transported in cells packed in vesicles. Fission control of the membrane can provide infection prevention responses with the ability to create vaccines, but his research is not producing tangible results at this stage, says Pucadyil. Peers recognize Pucadyil, the only Indian scientist among 41 researchers from 16 countries to have received a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last year, as an international researcher.
Dr. Rahul Banerjee, 45
Associate Professor, IISER-Kolkata
Areas of research: hydrogen storage, CO2 capture and methane storage
Dr. Rahul Banerjee says that when hydrogen reacts with oxygen, it produces water – as well as energy. "This energy can be used to solve global energy problems and we are working on the production of new materials or compounds for hydrogen storage." Dr. Banerjee's other areas of intervention include the discovery of materials that will sequester / filter .
Ashwin Gumaste, 42 years old
Associate Professor, Department of Computer and Engineering, IIT Bombay
Research field: Telecom
In 2010, Ashwin Gumaste designed a set of products for the government, including Ethernet switch routers for operators – high-speed transport routers with an all-Indian design. "We had a port-to-port latency of one microsecond on three layers of the telecom stack, while our competition – Chinese or Western – was 100 microseconds. As a result, we were faster, reducing energy consumption and reducing costs. We transferred the technology to Electronics Corporation of India in 2011 and have since deployed it on several networks, "says Gumaste.
In April of this year, he launched a much larger router, which was developed with DRDO funding. "Our [nation’s] The import bill for electronic products (including telecommunications) is higher than the oil import bill, which was very worrying. The goal was to produce indigenous products. "
Dr. Amit Kumar, 42 years old
Department of Computer Science and Engineering of IIT, Delhi
Areas of research: combinatorial optimization and graph theory algorithms
In summary, Professor Amit Kumar's work will help accelerate problem solving in the real world. "We are studying fast algorithms for problems with a lot of possible solutions, but we want to choose the best or the best. We need to build new models and algorithms to understand this class of problems. His colleagues at IIT say that Kumar's work on algorithms is already applied in the operation of data centers. "For example, when we search for something on Google, the search request is sent to a server in a data center. How to decide which data center and which server is used to answer this request? How can we decide the processing time of this request, as there could be many others in the queue? Each server consumes a lot of energy – in fact, 2% of the overall energy is injected into the data centers. How can we save energy when processing all these queries? All these applications are applications in which planning algorithms play a key role, "explains Professor Naveen Garg.
Ambarish Ghosh, 44 years old
Center for Nanoscience and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc-Bengaluru
Research field: Nanomotors to improve drug delivery
What are nanomotors? These are tiny machines that can convert chemical or external energy into mechanical motion. And what does Ghosh, a former student of IIT-Kharagpur, Brown University and Harvard University, want to use them? "Provide drugs to specific cells in the human body, especially in cancer patients. For example, when you inject the drug during chemotherapy, it goes everywhere and not just to cancer cells. Healthy cells are also killed. Now, if we can administer the drug directly to the cancer cells, in a controlled way, we can avoid all that. Thanks to his collaboration with chemists, biologists and materials specialists, his research is getting closer to reality. "We have developed a microscopic glass screw that can be used to target tissue using externally applied magnetic fields. It is non-invasive and does not need chemical fuel. That's why this technology is popular in the medical world. "
Dr. Nitin Saxena, age 41
Associate Professor, IIT Kanpur
Research field: Algebraic complexity
Dr. Nitin Saxena says that he abstractly analyzes computers using algebra. "I use it to solve computer problems. Along the way, this research creates a new type of mathematics that is both beautiful and sometimes practical. It is also called arithmetic circuit complexity. In this area, we solve some problems faster, or prove that some problems can not be resolved faster, regardless of our intelligence.
And how is his work applied in the real world? Algebraic complexity, says Dr. Saxena, is used in computers to store information and transmit it securely. Many practical algorithms use algebras in their details. These include cryptography, error correction, machine learning and graphical manipulation. According to his peers, Dr. Saxena's work is significant, especially at a time when cryptography and cybersecurity are becoming very important.
Madineni Venkat Ratnam, 45 years old
National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Tirupathi
Search field:
Average atmosphere
Madineni Venkat Ratnam is invested in the study of structures of the average atmosphere and sun-earth interactions. He is also involved in an ISRO-NASA project that studies the dense coverage of pollutants suspended between 13 and 18 km above Asia. "Global warming and climate change are easier to measure in the average atmosphere than on the surface of the Earth. For example, the processes exchanged between the stratosphere and the troposphere have a direct link with climate change. When the water vapor of the troposphere reacts with ozone in the stratosphere, it is destroyed, resulting in more UV radiation on the Earth. Scientists may be able to use this information to predict the future of the stratosphere, he says.
Ganesan Venkatasubramanian, 43
NIMHANS, Bengaluru
Research field: Schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders
The researchers are trying to identify biomarkers (or molecules) that signal the underlying condition of a psychiatric illness, whose knowledge is much more accessible in the case of heart disease, for example. This is where Ganesan Venkatasubramanian comes in. He has tried to understand psychiatric disorders through the evolutionary biology of the human brain. Over the past decade, her research on schizophrenia has suggested a link between systemic aberrations of immune metabolism and brain deficits, and can be used to identify new therapeutic and potentially therapeutic pathways for schizophrenia.
Dr. Aditi Sen De, 44 years old
Associate Professor of Physics, Harish Chandra Research Institute
Research Area: Quantum Information and Computation
Quantum information and computation, says Dr. Sen De, are a science at the crossroads of physics, computer science, mathematics, and information theory. "It has been shown that communication performance can be improved by using channels that respect the laws of quantum mechanics. "This means, of course, that the Internet is faster, but quantum mechanics," says Dr. Sen De, "is also used for national security. "We work closely with the armed forces. Let's say that there are two camps and that messages must be transmitted securely between them because these quantum mechanics networks can be used.
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