12 Scientists from IISc, IITs, CSIR labs selected for Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2022

SSB is a science award in India given annually for notable and outstanding research, applied or fundamental, in biology, chemistry, environmental science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, and physics.

As many as 12 scientists have been selected for the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology 2022. The Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institutes of Technology have once again dominated the list.

Dr Akkattu T Biju, Organic Chemistry; Dr Apoorva Khare, Mathematics; and Dr Anindya Das, Physics are the three scientists selected from IISc Bengaluru for the year 2022. Scientists from other institutions include, IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Gandhi Nagar, CSIR Labs, TIFR and Microsoft Research Lab India.

The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is a science award in India given annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for notable and outstanding research, applied or fundamental, in biology, chemistry, environmental science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, and physics. The award, being given since 1985, is named after the Founder Director of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.

One of the winner of the prize this year, Prof. Rajnish Kumar from IIT Madras is being awarded for his exceptional contributions to fundamental understanding of the nucleation and growth of clathrate hydrates, CO2 sequestration in solid hydrates and methane recovery from marine gas hydrates.

Accepting this recognition, Prof. Rajnish Kumar, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Madras, said: “I am extremely honored to receive the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize-2022 in Engineering Sciences. I would like to congratulate others who have also received the same award in different fields of science. This award has been made possible because of the hard work of many students who have worked on their theses in my laboratory at IIT Madras and CSIR-NCL, Pune. I also thank all the collaborators and the funding agencies who supported my research. Natural gas hydrates naturally occur beneath the sea-bed worldwide, and they can also be synthesized in the laboratory to provide technological solutions, from CO2 capture and sequestration to sustainable water purification. IIT Madras is at the forefront of research related to carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration and I believe this recognition for IIT Madras will enable us to contribute more in this field of research.”

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