Category Indian Scientists

What do we know about M.R.S. Rao?

Here is a scientist concerned about our body at the molecular level. Prof. M.R.S. Rao is the first scientist in India to initiate research on Chromatin Biology. Chromatin, if you don’t already know, is a genetic molecule made up of DNA, RNA and associated proteins. He has also made valuable contributions in studies on cancer, and in research on RNA.

He has over 100 publications and has guided 30 PhD students and many post-doctoral Fellows.

He completed BSc and MSC from Bangalore University and PhD from IISc, Bangalore. He did post-doctoral studies at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, U.S., where he also served as an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology. Later he joined IISc, Bangalore and worked as its Chairman.

He was the President of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (UNCASR) for ten years. He is on the editorial board of many learned journals and has recently joined as senior member on the editorial board of The American Journal of Cancer Research.

Professor Rao has been a member/chairman of several national and international committees. The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1988) and the Padma Shri (2010) are among the many prestigious awards won by him.

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Why is Charusita Chakravarty a remarkable woman?

Charusita Chakravarty was an Indian academic and scientist. She was a professor of chemistry at IIT – Delhi. She was also an Associate Member of the Centre for Computational Material Science, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru.

When she started her career, women were not taken very seriously in the field of science. Dr Charusita Chakravarty was determined to excel in her field. She raised her voice against the gender bias in the STEM fields. (STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine). She encouraged other women also to enter these fields.

She was born in Massachusetts in the US as her parents were leading economists there. However, she was raised in Delhi. Being a single child and growing up in a liberal environment gave her the courage to defy boundaries from an early age. She was also keen on poetry and music.

She topped the Delhi Higher Secondary Board and also Delhi University in her B. Sc Chemistry from St. Stephens College. She did a Natural Science Tripos from Cambridge and then her PhD, on quantum scattering and spectroscopy. She did her post-doctoral studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Her fields of interest also included theoretical chemistry and chemical physics, the structure and dynamics of liquids, water and hydration, nucleation and self-assembly. Her articles have come in national and international journals.

She received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology and also the B.M. Birla Science Award. Sadly, on 29 March 2016, Chakravarty passed away after a long and arduous battle with breast cancer.

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Is Kanak Saha a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology?

Yes, Kanak Saha is a famous Indian astrophysicist and he did receive the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize.

Do you know what Kanak Saha and his team discovered? They found that a galaxy which is 9.3 billion light years away from the Earth was emitting ultra violet light! His team used AstroSat, India’s first multi-wavelength satellite to observe this galaxy. It took them two years to analyze the data and to verify it.

This is an important clue to the origins of the universe, its dark ages and how light originated.

Kanak Saha was born on 04 February 1977 in Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He graduated in Physics from the Scottish Church College in 1998. For Masters, he went to Banaras Hindu University and completed his Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Science in 2008.

He is now working as associate professor of astrophysics at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune. He studies the dynamics of galaxies using cluster computer simulation.

He received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2021.

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What made Debdeep Mukhopadhyay’s contributions remarkable?

Debdeep Mukhopadhyay is a cryptographer and Computer Science professor at IIT, Kharagpur. He is interested in Hardware security, Cryptographic Engineering, Design Automation of Crypto- systems, and VLSI of Crypto- systems.

Mukhopadhyay was born on 31st October, 1977 in Howrah, a twin town of Kolkata. He was interested in computers from a young age and was inspired by his father, himself a computer professional. He was a student of IIT Kharagpur from his graduation till Ph.D. His Ph.D. thesis won the Techno-Inventor Award (for the best Ph.D.), from the Indian Semi- conductors Association in 2008.

He worked at IIT, Madras as Assistant Professor from 2007-8. Then he again joined his alma mater in 2008 and is a professor in the Department of Computer Science. He has worked as visiting faculty at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and New York University Shanghai, China. He was also a visiting scientist at the CYSREN, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Debdeep won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize for his contribution to cryptographic engineering in 2021.

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What made Arun Kumar Shukla a renowned scientist?

Arun Kumar Shukla is a famous structural biologist, who rose to fame with his study on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR). GPCR are proteins which are permanently attached to the cell membranes. These respond to sensory or other stimuli from outside the cells and also physiologically respond to hormones.

Shukla’s team of scientists at IIT, Kanpur designed nanomachines which target certain signalling events. Several marketed drugs work with the use of these techniques.

Dr. Arun Kumar Shukla was born on 01 November 1981 in Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. He did his PG degree in biotechnology from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Then he did his doctoral studies under the guidance of Hartmut Michel (Nobel Laureate,1988) of the Max Planck Institute of Bio- physics, Germany.

He started his career at the prestigious Duke University as an assistant professor at their department of medicine. He came back to India and joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK) at the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering (BSBE). He is a professor and heads the Laboratory of GPCR Biology.

Let us have a look at the many awards that Dr. Shukla received.

  • National Bioscience Award for Career Development, 2017-18.
  • 2021 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Biological Science.
  • B.M. Birla Science Prize (2017),
  • NASI-Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award of the National Academy of Sciences, India (2016),
  • CDRI Award (2018),
  • Shakuntala Amir Chand Prize of the Indian Council for Medical Research (2018)
  • EMBO Young Investigator Award (2017).

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Which Indian scientist is considered a pioneer in nanotechnology?

Professor Pulickel Ajayan who hails from Kerala can be called a wizard in the field of nanotechnology. He is armed with the darkest material and the smallest brush. He got into the Guinness Book of World Records twice for these.

The darkest material is out of the wizard book literally – a carpet that reflects only 0.045 per cent of light. It’s made of carbon nano-tubes.

Have you heard about the paper battery? This was also the creation of this Professor from Rice University, Houston. The paper battery grabbed the limelight in August 2007. This is basically an energy storage device on a piece of paper.

Pulickel Ajayan has 400 papers on carbon nanostructures. He is concerned about the environment and in 2012, came up with a hybrid material which could remove contaminants from water. He also developed a green battery made of lithium-ion cathode which is environment friendly.

He is currently working on how nanotechnology can be effectively used for energy storage devices.

Prof. Ajayan has won several awards and is on the advisory editorial board of several leading journals. He is also a board member of many nanotechnology companies. He is a visiting professor in many international universities too.

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