NEW DELHI: Eleven scientists, including mathematician Mahan MJ and physicist Shiraz Minwalla, were today conferred with the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2011 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Mahan MJ of the Ramkrishna Mission University and Palash Sarkar of Indian Statistical Institute bagged the prize for their contribution to mathematical sciences.
Minwalla of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and K N Balaji of Indian Institute of Science got the award for their contribution to physical and medical sciences respectively.
Amit Prakash Sharma of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and Ranjan Sankaranarayanan of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology received the prize in the area of biological sciences.
Balasubramanian Sundaram of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and G N Sastry of the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology got the award for their contribution to chemical sciences.
Shankar Doraiswamy of the National Institute of Oceanography bagged the prize for his contribution to ocean science.
In the category of engineering sciences, Sirshendu De of IIT-Kharagpur and Upadrasta Ramamurty of the Indian Institute of Science won the prestigious prize.
The award is named after the founder-Director of CSIR and carries a cash component of Rs five lakh. It is given annually to scientists below the age of 45 who have made outstanding contributions in any field of science and technology.
The Prime Minister also gave away the CSIR Young Scientist Awards to ten scientists. The award, given annually to a CSIR scientist of up to 35 years of age, carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000 and a research grant of Rs five lakh annually for five years.
Avinash Mishra of the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute and Vinod Scaria of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology won the Award in biological sciences. In the field of chemical sciences, Dipti Das of Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology and N Lakshminarasimhan of Central Electrochemical Research Institute bagged the honors.
In the earth, atmosphere, ocean and planetary sciences, Pawan Dewangan of the National Institute of Oceanography and R Ebhin Masto of Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research got the award.
Mugdha Gadgil of National Chemical Laboratory and Priyanka Maheshwari of the National Physical Laboratory won the awards in the engineering sciences category.
In physical sciences, Poonam Arora of the National Physical Laboratory and Umesh Tiwari of the Central Scientific Instrument Organization were given the awards.
Bangalore-based Tejas Networks was conferred the CSIR Diamond Jubilee Technology Award for developing and commercializing a high density core optical transport platform.
The Defense Institute of High Altitude Research, Leh won the CSIR Award for S&T Innovations for Rural Development 2010 for bringing qualitative and quantitative changes in agriculture, animal husbandry and cold desert flora of Ladakh.
The Directorate of Agriculture of the Uttar Pradesh government and National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow won the award for 2011 for developing environment friendly bioinoculants which have been used for enhancing the crop yield. -PTI
