AWARD FOR NIIST SCIENTIST

AWARD FOR NIIST SCIENTIST

A. Ajayaghosh, CSIR Outstanding Scientist at the Chemical Science and Technology Division of the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST) here has won the annual award instituted by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in Chemistry. He shares the prize with Chung-Yuan MOU of National Taiwan University’s Department of Chemistry in Taipei, Taiwan, China.The award was announced on Monday at the 24th general meeting of TWAS at Buenos Aires in Argentina. Prof. Ajayaghosh has been recognised for his contribution to the understanding of the self-assembly of linear pi-systems to supramolecular architectures with diverse shape, size and properties, leading to a new class of soft functional materials. A communication received by Prof. Ajayaghosh from Bai Chunli, president, TWAS, said he would receive a cash award of USD 7500 and a medal.

The annual TWAS Prizes are awarded in Agricultural Sciences; Biology; Chemistry; Earth Sciences; Engineering Sciences; Mathematics; Medical Sciences; Physics; and Social Sciences. This year, there are 14 prize winners from Brazil, China, India, Jordan, Taiwan, China and Turkey. The winners will lecture about their research at the 25th General Meeting of TWAS in 2014, where they will also receive a plaque and the prize money.Prof. Ajayaghosh won the 2012 Infosys Prize in physical sciences for his work that led to the design and synthesis of organogels (pi-gels), a new class of nanomaterials with great potential in the development of superior light harvesting devices. He is the first investigator to make functional phenylenevinylene organogels from designed building blocks.He had also won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for the year 2007 and the Thomson Reuters Science Citation award for the year 2009 for his research on fluorescent molecular assemblies

Prof. John Kurakar