Date:09/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/09/stories/2007120953751200.htm

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Scopus Young Scientist Awards presented

Staff Reporter

— Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Phile Govaert, Global Business Development Director (right) and Prof. Theo Groothuizen, counsellor Royal Dutch Embassy (left), with recipients of the 2nd Annual Scopus Young Scientist Awards at a function in New Delhi on Friday.

NEW DELHI: The second annual “Scopus Young Scientist Awards” were presented here on Friday to nine brilliant technical minds of the country from across various scientific disciplines.

The awardees comprised research scientists from several fields including life sciences, oceanic sciences, aerospace, chemistry, materials engineering, mathematics, and solid-state physics.

A brainchild of Elsevier, one of the leading publishers of science and health information worldwide, the awards strive to provide a platform for original and authentic scientific research.

Winners feted

Elsevier global business development director Phile Govaert explained the rudiments of the global scientific publishing business.

Theo Groothuizen, science and technology counsellor of the Dutch Embassy here felicitated the winners selected by a jury that included subject experts and senior academicians.

Scopus, the largest database of peer-reviewed scientific literature with tools to track, analyse and visualise research, was also used to identify the winners.

This year’s recipients of the Rs. 50,000 cash prize and a crystal plaque citation included Hyderabad-based Bakhtisaran Raman for research in the chaperone-like activity of alpha-crystallin; Anil Kumar of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay for research on the synthesis of functional biopolymers; S.K. Satheesh of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for his studies in earth sciences; Sanjay Mittal of IIT-Kanpur for his studies on computational fluid dynamics; Dinesh Mohan of the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre for his contributions to the encapsulation of pollutants from water/waste-water and development of environment-friendly wood preservatives.

The other awardees at the hour-long function were: Upadrastha Ramamurthy of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for his work in materials science; Nimish A. Shah from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, for his papers on the ergodic properties of subgroup actions on homogenous spaces of Lie groups.

Sushil Kumar Jha from the Jawaharlal Nehru University for his work on sleep-related medicine; and Vinod Kumar Aswal of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre for his contributions to the study of neutron scattering and condensed matter.