The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore had the lion’s share of medals with five of its faculty members being awarded the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Medal for Young Scientists 2016, making it the institute with more awardees than any other, a release said.
The winners from IISc this year are: Prabeer Barpanda, Sai Siva Gorthi, Praveen Kumar, Anshu Pandey and Chandan Saha.
The INSA annually presents the Young Scientist Award to distinguish young scientists who have made notable research contributions in science and technology. Started in 1974, about 760 scientists have been recognised so far. A maximum of 30 awards are given each year.
Terming it a matter of pride for its faculty, Anurag Kumar, Director, IISc said: “These awards have recognised work that cuts across boundaries of basic research and applied research, and of science and engineering. Their conferral on our faculty is testament to the success of the rich and varied, interdisciplinary intellectual atmosphere of the institute.”
The winners
Praveen Kumar, Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials Engineering: Awarded for his discovery of electric-field induced changes in the mechanical behaviour of Carbon Nanotube (CNT).
Prabeer Barpanda, Assistant Professor at the Materials Research Centre: Awarded for his work on the development of new classes of Lithium and Sodium cathode materials for next generation battery and storage application.
Sai Siva Gorthi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics: Awarded for his contribution to the field of Innovative Optofluidic technologies, an area that combines the advantages of microfluidics and optics. His recent work includes research and development of in-vitro diagnostic tools, biomedical instrumentation and microfluidic nanotechnology.
Chandan Saha, Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Automation: His work on arithmetic circuit lower bounds, polynomial identity testing and reconstruction of arithmetic circuits has led to the discovery of new mathematical techniques and substantial progress on these problems.
Anshu Pandey, Assistant Professor at the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit: Made it to the list with his contributions in the area of low threshold quantum dot lasers.
Praveen Kumar, Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials Engineering:
“In our work, we discovered that the strength and the energy absorption capacities of CNT cellular structures could be dramatically enhanced by applying an electric field. In addition, we also studied how we can manipulate the stress relaxation and creep behaviours, which are important for knowing the long-term applications of these samples.”
Chandan Saha, Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Automation:
“Understanding computational efficiency is a great challenge in theoretical computer science. Our work in the last eight years has revealed new insights into the behaviour of low-depth circuits that capture highly parallel computations. Low-depth circuits also form a gateway to understanding the intricate nature of general arithmetic computations. So, there is hope that some of the ideas and proof techniques introduced in our work will continue to generate exciting new research in the area.”
