My Science School

Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee, a professor of Geology from IIT- Kharagpur features among the top 100 influential people of 2020 by Time magazine. He is famous worldwide for his research in the field of groundwater exploration.

His team introduced a prediction model based on Artificial Intelligence for detecting arsenic in groundwater in the Gangetic delta. This feat was noted by the Jal Jeevan Mission.

A groundwater-surface water interaction is yet another one of his specializations. This work supplied important data regarding drinking water and food security to the Indian government. Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee has done ample researches on groundwater quantity and scarcity by understanding groundwater storage changes over the Indian subcontinent. This was achieved with advanced computation and Artificial Intelligence techniques.

Another significant role of Dr. Mukherjee is as head of one of South Asia's first Urban Geo-science projects in Varanasi. He has won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2020 in the field of Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences.

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You might have read in the papers some time back that the Taj Mahal was losing its white marble sheen and turning yellowish due to pollution. Dr. Sachchida Nand Tripathi, who holds the Arjun Dev Joneja Faculty Chair of Civil Engineering at IIT-Kanpur, was in the news for this study. His study helped bring about policy changes in Agra city.

This study specified that black carbon and brown carbon from the burning of trash and fuels was the main cause for discolouration. Using a novel method, the team discovered how the specks of dust on the surface reflect light and affect the colour. This study is crucial to develop strategies that address yellowing of the Taj Mahal and improves air quality.

His work in the field of Atmospheric Sciences has addressed the issues of air pollution and climate change. He has also novel approaches for low-cost sensor-based network technology which can monitor air quality in cities and Real Time Source Apportionment (RTSA). RTSA involves finding out the sources of pollution and how much they affect the environment.

Dr. Tripathi is the Coordinator of the National Knowledge Network devised under the National Clean Air Program, and is a member of its Steering Committee and Monitoring Committee. Further, he is a member of the Executive Council, Climate Change Program, Department of Science and Technology.

The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and the J C Bose National Fellowship are both feathers in his cap. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and National Academy of Sciences of India (NASI). He also worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre as a senior fellow.

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Meet the $100,000 prize winner of the New Horizon Prize in Physics, Prof. Shiraz Naval Minwalla. He is a theoretical physicist who works with string theory and quantum field theory. He is noted for connecting the equations of fluid dynamics and Einstein's equations of relativity.

He hails from Mumbai. After completing his Masters in Physics from IIT-Kanpur, he went to Princeton University, U.S.A. for his PhD. He was a junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and then served as assistant professor for five years. After that he joined the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai.

He won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 2011 and Infosys Prize in Physical sciences in 2013. He also got the TWAS prize in 2016.

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Soumen Basak is an immunologist and virologist at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi. He heads the Systems Immunology laboratory there.

He is known for his studies on NF- kappaB, a molecule that controls the activity of a gene.

Dr. Basak did his M.Sc. and PhD in Biochemistry from Calcutta University. He went on to the University of California, San Diego for post-doctoral studies.

He was awarded the National Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2018 and won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in biological sciences the next year.

Dr. Basak is a fellow of all three Indian Science Academies, namely the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

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Have you ever noticed that all electric appliances generate heat energy? Do we need to waste electrical energy as heat? Kanishka Biswas, who is an associate professor in the New Chemistry Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, and his team have come up with a novel compound called silver copper telluride(Ag Cu te) which converts waste heat into electricity. Usually, 65 per cent of electrical energy is wasted as heat energy. Silver copper telluride can be used in automobile industry and power plants where much of the energy is wasted as heat.

Kanishka Biswas is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), U.K. He has bagged many prestigious awards and prominent among them is the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, which he won for Chemical Sciences in 2021.

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We meet another theoretical physicist who works on string theory. Prof. Ashoke Sen is a distinguished professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. He is also interested in black hole entropy. We have already seen black holes. Now, entropy is the measure of disorder in a system. Dr. Sen applied string theory to black hole entropy. He studied at IIT-Kanpur and got a doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, U.S.A.

He has authored and co-authored many important papers on string field theory. Prof. Sen holds the position of Honorary Fellow in the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar. He is also a Morning- star visiting professor at MIT and a distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.

Prof. Sen was one of the nine winners of the first Fundamental Physics prize started by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner - each of the winners getting $ 3 million. This is twice the amount of the Nobel prize. He was nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society, won the Padma Shri and was a recipient of the Bhatnagar Award in 1994.

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Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju is a professor of Chemistry at the University of Hyderabad. He is regarded as one of the founders of Crystal Engineering.

Have you heard of Crystal Engineering? It is designing molecular solids with specific properties. This is done by making use of the interactions between molecules.

Crystal Engineering has developed greatly and Desiraju played a crucial role in this. Now 200 independent research groups in Crystal Engineering exist worldwide.

He has also researched into the non-conventional hydrogen bond, also known as the weak hydrogen bond. These bonds have distinct roles and guide molecular associations. Earlier they were dismissed to be of no significance. Now these bonds are used to understand biomolecules and to create drugs.

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Dr. Anil Bhardwaj has made significant contributions as an astrophysicist. He serves as the Director of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, which is a unit of the Department of Space, of the Government of India.

Dr. Anil Bhardwaj received his M.Sc from Lucknow University and PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi. He joined ISRO as a scientist at the Space Physics Laboratory (SPL) of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Trivandrum. He rose to become the Director of SPL.

SPL's research in planetary science was initiated by Dr. Bhardwaj, and he contributed greatly in developing planetary science programs in ISRO. He acted as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the SARA (Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer) experiment on Chandrayaan-1, India's first Lunar mission. The new findings changed our understanding on the interaction of solar wind with the Moon.

He has played a key role in many space missions of ISRO. He got the ISRO Team Achievement Award for Chandrayaan-1. He has also won the most coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2007) and the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences (2016).

Dr. Bhardwaj was the editor- in-chief of Advances in Geosciences for seven years, and was among the editors of the European journal Planetary and Space Science, the Bulletin of Astronomical Society of India and Current Science, a journal published by Current Science Association and Indian Academy of Sciences.

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Yes. Saket Saurabh did win the said prize in Mathematical Sciences in 2021. He is the Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai and an adjunct faculty at University of Bergen, Norway. He specializes in parameterized complexity, exponential algorithm, graph theory and algorithmic game theory which are different fields of computation.

We've seen what algorithms are. Hard algorithmic problems are dealt with in parameterized complexity. Exponential algorithm is used to sort infinite range. Graph theory deals with the study of graphs. Algorithmic game theory combines algorithmic thinking with theoretical ideas.

Saurabh got BSc (Honours) in Mathematics and MSc in Computer Science from Chennai Mathematical Institute. He did his PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from Indian Institute of Mathematical Science (IMSc) and became a faculty member later.

He had worked as a research assistant at the University of Bergen and also did post-doctoral studies there. He received a European Research Council Grant twice, and is a recipient of the 2020 ACM India Early Career Researcher Award. He was elected as a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2020. He has also co-authored two books- Parameterized Algorithms and Kernelization: Theory of Parameterized Preprocessing.

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