Awards & Honours
Sulabh founder to get New York Global Leaders Dialogue Humanitarian Award
Social activist and founder of Sulabh International, Bindeshwar Pathak was selected for the New York Global Leaders Dialogue Humanitarian Award. He was awarded for his contribution to sanitation and enhancing the quality of life for millions of manual scavengers.
The New York Global Leaders Dialogue Humanitarian Award will be presented to Pathak in April 2016 in New York. “[Mr] Pathak is a great humanitarian, who for decades, has enhanced the quality of life for millions of fellow human beings. He embodies our philosophy of leadership, namely, that leadership is focused on creating collaborative new space in the service of others,” New York Global Leaders Dialogue said in a statement. The organisation also said that Mr Pathak was the perfect example of a social leader, which was needed to be followed by several other nations.
Sulabh, which engages nearly 50,000 people, has constructed nearly 1.3 million household toilets and 54 million government toilets based on an innovative design. Apart from construction of toilets, the organisation is leading a movement to discourage manual cleaning of human waste.
Infosys Prize 2015
The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2015 across six categories. The prize for each category consists of a purse of 65 lakh, a 22 karat gold medallion and a citation certificate. The names of the winners are as follows:
Engineering and Computer Science: Prof. Umesh Waghmare, Professor – Theoretical Sciences Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India, for his innovative use of first-principles theories and modelling in insightful investigations of microscopic mechanisms responsible for specific properties of certain materials such as topological insulators, ferroelectrics, multiferroics and graphene.
Humanities: Prof. Jonardon Ganeri, Global Network Professor of Philosophy, New York University and Recurrent Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, UK, for his outstanding scholarship and originality in interpreting and scrutinizing analytical Indian Philosophy and shedding light on shared ground as well as the dichotomy between Indian and Greek traditions of philosophical reasoning.
Life Sciences: Dr Amit Sharma, Group Leader, Structural and Computational Biology Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India, for his pioneering contributions towards deciphering the molecular structure, at the atomic level, of key proteins involved in the biology of pathogenesis of the deadly malarial parasite.
Mathematical Sciences: Prof. Mahan Mj, Professor of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, for his contributions to geometric group theory, low-dimensional topology and complex geometry. In particular, he established a central conjecture in the Thurston program to study hyperbolic 3-manifolds and introduced important new tools to study fundamental groups of complex manifolds
Physical Sciences: Prof. G. Ravindra Kumar, Professor in the Department of Nuclear and Atomic Physics (DNAP), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India, for his pioneering experimental contributions to the physics of high intensity laser matter interactions. In particular for providing, for the first time, unequivocal evidence of turbulent magnetic fields and the discovery of terahertz frequency acoustic waves, in laser produced hot dense plasmas. These results have significance to testing stellar and astrophysical scenarios.
Social Sciences: Dr Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India, for outstanding research that synthesizes military history, international politics, and strategic analysis into powerful and imaginative perspectives on India in global context.
GyanSetu wins ITU Recognition of Excellence Award
The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) bagged the Recognition of Excellence award for GyanSetu at the ITU World Telecom 2015 held at Budapest, Hungary.
GyanSetu seeks to facilitate the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India Initiative and was selected for the award for its innovative approach and social impact. It focuses on overcoming low/no-literacy levels and physical disabilities, thereby helping to achieve self-reliance, bringing the advantages of the digital world and facilitate inclusion in the mainstream society.
Shiv Kumar Sharma receives Aditya Vikram Birla Kala Shikhar Award
Santoor maestro Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma has been honoured with the Aditya Vikram Birla Kala Shikhar Award for lifetime achievement.
The Kala Shikhar Award was instituted by the Sangit Kala Kendra, headed by Rajashree Birla. Noted personalities like Lata Mangeshkar, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Jasraj, Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, Pandit Ram Narayan, M. F. Hussain, Habib Tanvir, Gangubai Hangal and Dr Girija Devi are some of the past recipients of the award.
The Sangit Kala Kendra was founded by late industrialist Aditya Vikram Birla in 1973 to encourage and nurture the various visual and performing arts. The awards were instituted in 1996.
The Kala Kiran Awards were presented to Murad Ali Khan (Sarangi), Satyajit Talwalkar (Tabla) and Special Jury Award to Sanjeev and Ashwani Shankar (both Shehnai).