Three city-based scientists have won the Swarnajayanti Fellowship for 2017-18.
The fellowship, awarded by the Department of Science and Technology, includes ₹25,000 a month for five years, along with grants for equipment, computational facilities, national and international travel. It is given every year to a select number of young scientists (below 40 years). K.G. Arun from the Chennai Mathematical Institute was selected in the field of Physical Sciences.
He specialises in the field of gravitational wave science.
“More specifically, my group is involved in developing new methods to test the correctness of [Albert] Einstein’s theory of gravity using gravitational wave observations,” he said. “The fellowship will be used to take forward the activities of the group, which aims at answering these questions using the data from the LIGO and Virgo detectors,” he added.
In Engineering Sciences, Ashish Kumar Sen from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, was among the winners. His team is working at developing healthcare technology for early prediction of sepsis and improved prognosis / therapy for cancer. He is also working on developing a ‘lab-on-chip’ device for early and rapid diagnosis of dengue antigen in blood. He explained: “Our main research interests are in the areas of microfluidics based interfacial phenomena and healthcare diagnostics.”
Saket Saurabh from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences won the fellowship in the field of Mathematical Sciences. He is a professor of theoretical computer science at the institute and his work is centered on designing algorithms for computationally hard problems.
“In the future, my group would like to work on designing a framework for refined algorithm analysis for all kinds of problems spanning all domains and sub-fields of computer science,” he told The Hindu.