Rishikesh Narayan, Partha Sarathi Mukherjee and Sudhir Kumar Vempati
Four Bengalureans are among the winners of 2016 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awards, one of India’s most prestigious science prizes. Three Indian Institute of Science (IISc) researchers — Rishikesh Narayan, Partha Sarathi Mukherjee and Sudhir Kumar Vempati — have been chosen for the award for their valuable contributions in the field of biological, chemical and physical sciences, respectively.
The fourth Bengaluru resident in the honour list is Microsoft Research India’s Venkata Narayana Padmanabhan, who will share the prize in the category of engineering sciences with Avinash Kumar Agarwal from IIT-Kanpur.
Other recipients include Suvendra Nath Bhattacharayya (biological science) from Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata; Sunil Kumar Singh (earth and atmospheric sciences) from Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and Subramaniam Anantha Ramakrishna (physical sciences) from IIT-Kanpur.
In mathematics, the Bhatnagar award will be shared by Amlendu Krishna from TIFR, Mumbai, and Naveen Garg from IIT-Delhi. In medical science, the lone winner is A S Niyaz Ahmed from the University of Hyderabad.
The award comprises Rs 5 lakh cash and a citation. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi handed over the prizes to Bhatnagar awardees between 2012 and 2015.