Published Online on 10 December 2015 Proc Indian Natn Sci Acad 81 No. 5 December 2015 pp. 1245-1261 Printed in India. ACADEMY NEWS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (I), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. The Annual General Meeting of the Academy was For his contributions to b-tagging at LEP and held during October 13-14, 2015 at IISER Mohali. establishing neural networks for particle physics During the two day’s event, several lectures by analyses. INYAS Fellows, a public lecture by Professor Amod Vikraman Balaji (b 15.09.1962), PhD, Professor, Gupta, Department of Ophthalmology, PGIMER, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Kelambakkam. Chandigarh on Fostering Curiosity: A Primer in Promoting Scientific Temperament and a special For his major contributions to the theory of moduli lecture on The Dying Art of Writing and Reading by of vector bundles over curves and algebraic varieties Professor R Gadagkar, President INSA were delivered and for extending to higher dimensions the celebrated followed by the Council meeting. work of MS Narasimhan and CS Seshadri about the unitary representations of the fundamental groups of The Council announced the names of the algebraic curves and vector bundles over them. awardees of Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Medal (2016) and Etienne Wolff-Ramanujan Lecture Series- Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay (b 17.04.1968), PhD, 2015 to Nobel Laureate, Professor Venky Director, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Ramakrishnan, FNA, President of the Royal Society, For her contributions to genetic algorithm based London and to Professor Raghavendra Gadagkar, clustering with applications to image processing and President, INSA, respectively. computational biology. The Council at its meeting in October elected BV Rajarama Bhat (b 16.01.1966), PhD, Professor 34 Indian scientists as INSA Fellows, three overseas & Head, Stat-Math Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, scientists as Foreign Fellows and two scientists as Bengaluru. Pravasi Fellows. It also decided to offer the INSA Teachers Award to 12 outstanding teachers and INSA For his work relating to the theory of E-0-semigroup Young Historian of Science Award to two young to Hilbert C*-modules and for his subsequent work scholars. These are detailed below. on sum systems that led to significant extensions of Tsirelsen’s probabilistic constructions of such Fellows Elected 2015 (Effective from 01 January semigroups of type 2 and 3. 2016): Renee Maria Borges (b 25.02.1959), PhD, Professor Anuranjan Anand (b 05.04.1965), PhD, Professor and Chairperson, Centre for Ecological Sciences, and Chair, Molecular Biology and Genetics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru. For her novel findings in sensory ecology of nocturnal bees and significant contributions to the chemical For his discovery of genetic loci behind epilepsy and ecology of figs and fig wasps. hearing loss specific genes like EIG8 and HWE3 and Vani Brahmachari (b 06.06.1955), PhD, Professor, for showing the involvement of mutations in non- Epigenetics and Developmental Biology Group, Dr channel genes in epilepsy. BR Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research, Tariq Aziz (b 02.04.1953), PhD, Senior Professor University of Delhi, Delhi. 1246 Academy News For her understanding of epigenetic mechanisms of replicating helicase of H. pylori as a potential drug genomic imprinting and for discovering a novel target and for identifying key molecules in replication chromatin remodeling gene, INO 80. of P. falciparum and drugs that have shown promise in both in vitro and animal models. Asit Kumar Chakraborti (b 15.08.1954), PhD, Professor & Head of Department, Department of Kanak Lata Dikshit (b 01.07.1951), PhD, former Medicinal Chemistry, National Institute of Chief Scientist, CSIR-Institute of Microbial Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Punjab. Technology, Chandigarh. For his notable contribution in unraveling the function For her life time contributions in the area of microbial of ionic liquids in catalysis and green synthetic hemoglobin through characterization of HbO in methodologies. Mycobacterium tuberculosis and her applied work on thrombolytic proteins leading to the development Niranjan Chakraborty (b 24.02.1958), PhD, Staff of a process which has been licensed to industry. Scientist-VII, National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi. Balasubramanian Gopal (b 31.08.1970), PhD, Professor, Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute For his work, using proteomics approach, on of Science, Bengaluru. molecular mechanisms underlying plant responses to adverse environmental conditions leading to the For his contributions to understanding of structure- identification of differentially regulated organelle- function mechanisms controlling transcription in specific proteins for modulating responses of crops prokaryotes, using extra-cytoplasmic function sigma for better adaptation to stress. factors of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as model. Charusita Chakravarty (b 05.05.1964), PhD, Gagandeep Kang (b 03.11.1962), PhD, Professor Professor, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute and Head, The Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory, of Technology Delhi, New Delhi. Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College, Vellore. For her significant contributions in the area of order- For her outstanding investigation in community trial disorder phase transitions and use of energy landscape of the Rota virus vaccine and being the key person in analysis in phase transition in bulk liquids and finite generating data relevant for policy makers, on disease clusters as well as implementation of quantum effects burden, vaccine efficacy and safety. in path-integral Monte Carlo calculation. Pulugurtha Bharadwaja Kirti (b 15.09.1953), PhD, Gautam Kumar Dey (b 08.06.1957), PhD, Professor Professor, Department of Plant Sciences, University & Dean-Academic (Engg. Sciences), Homi Bhabha of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. National Institute, BARC, Mumbai. For his work on somatic hybridization involving For his monumental work on zirconium based Indian mustard and its wild relatives that resulted in amorphous alloys and engineering materials such as useful male sterile lines, two of which have been zirconium and nickel based alloys and for employing utilized for developing commercial mustard hybrids a variety of novel TEM techniques to unfold complex and for his contribution to characterisation of defence microstructures. related gene in wild species of Arachis, which Suman Kumar Dhar (b 06.03.1968), PhD, provided novel insights in defence response and has Professor, Special Centre for Molecular Medicine, practical relevance. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Kalobaran Maiti (b 21.10.1967), PhD, Professor H, For his fundamental contributions to DNA replication Department of Condensed Matter Physics and in two human pathogens, Plasmodium falciparum and Materials Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Helicobacter pylori leading to identification of unique Research, Mumbai. Academy News 1247 For his outstanding contributions in materials Trivandrum Ramakrishnan Ramadas (b research using state-of-the-art electron spectroscopic 30.03.1955), PhD, Distinguished Professor, Chennai instrument and for discovering new routes to study Mathematical Institute, Kelambakkam. correlated electron systems which has unraveled For his path-breaking contributions to mathematical many long-standing issues in materials science. physics, algebraic geometry and their varied Sangita Mukhopadhyay (b 01.01.1966), PhD, Staff intersections and for some of his influential works in Scientist VI, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and the areas of Chern-Simons gauge theory, Jones Diagnostics, Hyderabad. polynomials, moduli of vector bundles and Frobenius splitting. For her pioneering contributions to mechanistic understanding of hijacking of host signaling pathways Vivek Vinayak Ranade (b 15.10.1963), PhD, Deputy by M. tuberculosis proteins for its own benefit. Director and Chair, Chemical Engineering & Process Development Division, CSIR-National Chemical Amlan Jyoti Pal (b 26.05.1960), PhD, Senior Laboratory, Pune. Professor, Department of Solid State Physics, Indian For his contribution to studies of multiphase flows Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata. in a variety of reactors. For his research on low dimensional structures- both Chebrolu Pulla Rao (b 13.05.1954), PhD, Institute ‘soft’ organic materials, as well as inorganic structures Chair Professor, Department of Chemistry, Indian that has shown how these molecules can be organized Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. by supramolecular engineering and how these molecular arrangements may be exploited for For his significant contribution in bio-inorganic applications ranging from solar photovoltaics to mimetics using carbohydrate and calixarene based organic transistors and memory devices. ligands. Amit Kumar Patra (b 20.04.1966), PhD, Scientist- Khareedu Venkateswara Rao (b 10.02.1958), PhD, SG, National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Professor, Centre for Plant Molecular Biology, Tirupati. Osmania University, Hyderabad. For his outstanding contributions towards the For his outstanding research on the development of influence of the coupled processes between the E and transgenic crops resistant to pests and pathogens and F regions on the development of plasma irregularities for isolating stress-inducible genes from pigeon pea in the low latitude ionospheric E region and for which would be useful