Dr. Sakya Singha Sen, a senior scientist from National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL), Pune has received the first “Merck Young Scientist Award 2019” for doing remarkable research in chemical science. Sen and his research team won this award for their specialization in the main group of chemistry and synthesis of compounds with main group elements and their catalytic application. The winners received a cash award of Rs 2,00,000 and a Travel Award of Rs 1,50,000 each.
Dr. Sen quoted, “All the catalysts currently used mostly belong to precious metals platinum, palladium, iridium, etc. These are very expensive and their abundance on the earth is very less. They can’t be used for a longer period as there are chances that these may finish soon. “My group is trying to do the same chemical transformation with Earth’s abundance of metals like silicon and calcium. Silicon is the second most Earth’s abundance metal and calcium is fifth most so can we do the same transformation with these elements instead of those precious metals”.
Merck Young Scientist Awards 2019 Jury Members
The Jury included eminent researchers from reputed Indian Academic institutes. The head of the Jury panel was Dr. Shahid Jameel, Chief Executive Officer, The Welcome Trust / DBT India Alliance. The Co-Chair Members were Prof Apurva Sarin, Director, Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Dr. Radha Rangarajan, CEO, Co-Founder, Vitas Pharma, Dr. Anurag Agrawal, Director of Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology and Dr. Davinder Gill, Chief Executive Officer Hilleman Laboratories.
The other recipients of the award are:
- Dr. Siddhesh S Kamat, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune.
- Dr. Basker, IIT Kanpur.
- Dr. Debojyoti Chakraborty, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi (IGIB).
- Dr. Mahendran K.R, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram (RGCB).
- Dr. Dipyaman Ganguly, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata (CSIR-IICB).
Merck Young Scientist Award
Found by Friedrich Jacob Merck in Darmstadt, Germany in 1668, Merck is a global company working on breakthrough solutions and technologies in more than sixty countries. Merck Young Scientist Award is given to researchers with less than ten years of experience with expertise in solving some of the toughest problems in chemical sciences.
