AHEAD of its foundation day, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Monday announced the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awards for 2022 to be distributed to 12 young scientists across the country. Immunologist Dipyaman Ganguli of CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata; microbiologist Ashwani Kumar from CSIRInstitute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh; biologist Maddika Subba Reddy from the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting Diagnostics; Akkattu T Biju of Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru; and Debabrata Maiti of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay are among the awardees.

 

The award is given every year to scientistsunderthe ageof 45 years and carries a purse of Rs five lakh and a citation. The announcement of the awardscameamidarowover government’splans toprune National Science Awards. While Ganguli has been awarded in the field of medical sciences, Kumar and ReddyhavereceivedthePrize fortheir contributionto biological sciences.

 

Biju and Maiti have been awarded for theircontributiontothefield of chemical sciences. In the Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences category, Vimal Mishra from IndianInstitute of Technology-Gandhinagar hasbeennamedforthePrize. In the Engineering Sciences category, Dipti Ranjan Sahoo of Indian Institute of TechnologyDelhi; and Rajnish Kumar of Indian Institute of Technology-Madras have received the Prize. InthefieldofMathematical Sciences, Apoorva Khare of the Indian Institute of Science-Bengaluru and Neeraj Kayal from the MicrosoftResearchLabIndia, Bengaluru have been selected for the Prize. In the category of Physical Sciences, Anindya Das of Indian Institute of ScienceBengaluru and Basudeb DasguptaoftheTataInstitute of Fundamental Research Mumbai have been selected for the Prize. The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, instituted in the memory of the first DirectorGeneraloftheCSIR, areusuallyannouncedonthe foundation day of the institution on September 26. The winners of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2021 included Kanak Saha,Kanishka Biswas, Amit Singh,ArunKumarShukla,T Govindaraju, Binoy Kumar Saikia, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, Anish Ghosh, Saket Saurabh, JeemonPanniyammakaland Rohit Srivastava.