Chandrayaan-3 team, G Padmanabhan make it to Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar list

The 86-year-old Padmanabhan, a celebrated biochemist who is well known for his work on the malaria parasite, has been named a Vigyan Ratna, which recognises lifetime achievement of the scientist. Padmanabhan, a towering figure in Indian science who has had a big influence on India’s science policy as well, has already been honoured with Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan.

The Chandrayaan-3 team, which landed India’s first spacecraft on the Moon last year, has been honoured with the Vigyan Team award.

The scientists chosen for the Vigyan Yuva Puraskar include Pragya Yadav, a senior scientist at National Institute of Virology, Pune who was one of the key people in the fight against Covid19 pandemic. She also led the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) team that developed the Covaxin vaccine for Covid19 in collaboration with Bharat Biotech.

Among other winners of the Vigyan Yuva Puraskar were Vivek Polshettiwar of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, a chemist who works on carbon capture technologies among others, Urbasi Sinha of Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, one of India’s leading experts in quantum research, and Roxy Mathew Koll of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, a well-known climate scientist.

Annapurni Subramaniam is among the 13 scientists selected for the Vigyan Shri award. Subramaniam, whose main research relates to the formation and evolution of stars clusters and galaxies, has worked closely with ISRO on several space projects, including the Aditya-L1 mission. Others chosen for Vigyan Shri include biologist Jayant Bhalchandra Udgaonkar, a former director of IISER Pune who works on proteins, and particle physicist Naba Kumar Mondal from Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata, who has served as the project director of the India-based Neutrino Observatory.