Physical Sciences

Prof. Yamuna Krishnan is the 2017 Infosys Prize laureate in Physical Sciences. In 2014 she moved to The University of Chicago and is Professor at the Department of Chemistry. Prof. Krishnan’s research explores the chemical environment inside nanoscale compartments within cells called organelles. Using DNA nanotechnology, she has developed a platform to probe these nanoscale spaces inside cells. The Krishnan Lab at The University of Chicago seeks to understand the functions of DNA beyond that of its traditional role as genetic material. Yamuna Krishnan was awarded the Sun Pharma Foundation Award for Basic Medical Research in 2020 and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Chemical Sciences in 2013. She is an AAAS Fellow and was on Cell's 40 under 40. Other accolades include the Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science award, Scientific Innovations Award from the Brain Research Foundation, Wellcome Trust - DBT India Alliance Senior Fellowship Award, and an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.

Spenta R. Wadia is the Infosys Homi Bhabha Chair Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR) and Distinguished Emeritus Professor of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He is the Founding Director of ICTS-TIFR, a unique institution involved in furthering the boundaries of fundamental research and science education, emphasizing that science is one story. Prof. Spenta Wadia has made basic contributions to quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, string theory and black hole physics. His other interests are in complex systems and cross-disciplinary biology.

Prof. Wadia is an alumnus of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, City University of New York and the University of Chicago. He has held long-term visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and CERN Geneva. Wadia’s recognitions include the TIFR Alumni Association Excellence Award in 2016, The World Academy of Science (TWAS) Physics Prize in 2004, the Physics Prize of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in 1995. Prof. Spenta Wadia is a Distinguished Alumnus of St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and a member of the Indian National Science Academy, The Indian Academy of Sciences and TWAS.

Prof. Ramamurti Shankar obtained his B. Tech. (EE) at IIT-Madras and his Ph.D. in Particle Physics at UC Berkeley. Following three years at the Harvard Society of Fellows, he joined the physics faculty at Yale in 1977 and served as its chair during 2001-2007.

Prof. Shankar has worked on determining the quark-gluon coupling using ideas from S-matrix theory, the exact S-matrices for a few two-dimensional field theories (with Edward Witten), and (often with Ganpathy Murthy) the exact solution of several problems in the statistical mechanics of homogenous and random systems, the Hamiltonian theory of the Fractional quantum Hall effect, and topological insulators. Shankar provided the renormalization group foundations of Landau’s Fermi liquid theory.

Ramamurti Shankar is a compulsive pedagogue who has given public lectures on relativity and quantum mechanics. His Open Yale Courses on Introductory Physics, available on You Tube, have had over 40 million hits (with subtitles in China). He has written five books: Principles of Quantum Mechanics and Basic Training in Mathematics (Springer), Fundamentals of Physics I and II (Yale Press) and Field Theory and Condensed matter (Cambridge). His books have been translated into Polish, Greek and Chinese. Prof. Shankar was awarded the A.P. Sloan Fellowship, the Harwood Burns-Richard Sewell teaching prize from Yale and the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society.

Prof. Shankar is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a Visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Simons Professor KITP Santa Barbara, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at IIT-Madras.

Ramamurti Shankar has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Statistical Physics, the Dannie Heineman and the Lilienfeld Prize Committees of the APS, the Committee of Visitors at the National Science Foundation, advisory boards of KITP Santa Barbara, the Center for Correlated Electrons and Magnetism, Augsburg, the Mathematical and Physical Sciences section of the Simons Foundation and a Trustee of the Aspen Center of Physics.

Dr. Srivari Chandrasekhar is Chief Scientist at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) in Hyderabad, India. Dr. Chandrasekhar works in synthetic organic chemistry. His research focus is the synthesis of complex molecules from natural sources.

Chandrasekhar received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from Osmania University, and pursued post-doctoral research at the UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, USA. He was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Göttingen where he worked on the synthesis of hybrid natural products with Prof. L. F. Tietze.

At IICT, Chandrasekhar was instrumental in setting up the state-of-the-art Molbank facility for the storage and retrieval of chemical samples for HT screening.

In 2021, Srivari Chandrasekhar was appointed the Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, a post he demitted in 2023 to return to IICT.

Dr. Chandrasekhar is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Indian Academy of Sciences and Indian National Science Academy. Srivari Chandrasekhar was awarded the Infosys Prize 2014 in Physical Sciences for his diverse and notable contributions in synthetic organic chemistry and for devising innovative, practical approaches to pharmaceuticals of current interest to industry.

Prof. Yamuna Krishnan received her B.Sc. in Chemistry from the Women’s Christian College, Chennai. She went on to obtain her M.S. in Chemical Sciences and her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Following her postdoctoral work at the University of Cambridge, UK, Prof. Krishnan was appointed to the faculty at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. In 2014, she moved as Professor of Chemistry to The University of Chicago.

Prof. Krishnan’s research explores the chemical environment inside nanoscale compartments within cells called organelles. Using DNA nanotechnology she has developed a platform to probe these nanoscale spaces inside cells. The Krishnan Lab at The University of Chicago conducts seeks to understand the functions of DNA beyond that of its traditional role as the genetic material. Among the advances made by the lab is the development of versatile chemical imaging technology using nanodevices composed of DNA to probe or manipulate organelles inside living cells and in genetic model organisms.

Prof. Yamuna Krishnan was awarded the Infosys Prize in 2017 in the Physical Sciences category, the Sun Pharma Foundation Award for Basic Medical Research in 2020 and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Chemical Sciences in 2013. She is a AAAS Fellow and was on Cell's 40 under 40. Other accolades include the Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science award, Scientific Innovations Award from the Brain Research Foundation, Wellcome Trust - DBT India Alliance Senior Fellowship Award, and an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.

An experimental physicist with interests in fundamental physics and tests of gravity and quantum mechanics, Dr. Rana Adhikari is recognized as one of the world’s top scientists in Life Sciences and fundamental Physics.

A graduate from the University of Florida, he went on to earn his Ph.D from MIT in 2004. One of the key member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) team, they made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves in 2015. His group focuses on further improving LIGO's measurements of black holes by exploring the limits of quantum measurements, and using those black holes to measure the shape of the universe.

Dr. Adhikari (along with Lisa Barsotti and Matthew Evans from MIT) was one of the six recipients of the New Horizons in Physics Prize, 2019. The New Horizons in Physics Prizes honors early-career achievements in physics and math.

Dr. Milind Purohit is an experimental particle physicist with research, teaching, and leadership experience on many experiments and in an administrative context at several institutions. These include the California Institute of Technology, Fermilab, Princeton University, and the University of South Carolina. His professional interest has been in the study of charm and bottom quarks as well as in the physics of neutrinos. He has been co-spokesperson of a major experiment at Fermilab (E791) for over 15 years, has participated in and chaired university-wide committees at South Carolina, and chaired the Department of Physics and Astronomy there for five years. In the year 2012, he was part of a team that published evidence of the only predicted but unseen fundamental particle that had yet to be observed: the Higgs boson. As a student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in the early 1970s, Purohit completed undergraduate and Master’s work that continued with his work at Caltech. At Fermilab he computed the effects of another significant fundamental particle, the gluon, in photon-hadron interactions and collected and studied data to determine the spin of the gluon, which is fundamental to the Standard Model.

An Indian physicist and researcher, Prof. Ajay Sood is known for his pioneering research findings on graphene and nanotechnology as well as soft condensed matter, with a strong focus on innovative experiments.

Prof. Sood earned his Master’s degree from the Punjab University. He went on to join the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, as a scientist. During this tenure, he obtained his Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Science.

A recipient of several fellowships, awards and honors, some of his notable recognitions have been: Padma Shri (2013); TWAS Prize in Physics, in 2000; Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, 1990, etc. He was the President of the Indian National Science Academy from 2017 to 2019, President of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 2010 to 2012 and the Secretary General of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) from 2013 to 2018. He is a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India. In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

An experimental physicist with interests in fundamental physics and tests of gravity and quantum mechanics, Dr. Rana Adhikari is recognized as one of the world’s top scientists in Life Sciences and fundamental Physics.

A graduate from the University of Florida, he went on to earn his Ph.D from MIT in 2004. One of the key member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) team, they made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves in 2015. His group focuses on further improving LIGO's measurements of black holes by exploring the limits of quantum measurements, and using those black holes to measure the shape of the universe.

Dr. Adhikari (along with Lisa Barsotti and Matthew Evans from MIT) was one of the six recipients of the New Horizons in Physics Prize, 2019. The New Horizons in Physics Prizes honors early-career achievements in physics and math.

Prof. Subir Sachdev’s research is focused on condensed matter physics. It describes the connection between properties of modern quantum materials and the quantum entanglement of electrons. He has made extensive contributions to the description of the diverse varieties of entangled states of quantum matter. Many of these contributions have been linked to experiments, especially to the rich phase diagrams of the high temperature superconductors. He has also developed a connection between entanglement in quantum matter, and the properties of black holes in theories of quantum gravity.

He attended college at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; B.S. in Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University. He held professional positions at Bell Labs (1985–1987) and at Yale University (1987–2005), where he was a Professor of Physics, before returning to Harvard, where he is now the Herchel Smith Professor of Physics. During 2021-22 he is also the Maureen and John Hendricks Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

He has been elected to national academies of science in India and the U.S. and is a recipient of a number of awards and honors which include: Dirac Medals from the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), 2018, and the University of New South Wales, 2015; Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society (APS), 2018; Abdus Salam Distinguished Lecturer, ICTP, Italy, 2014; Hendrik Lorentz Chair, Lorentz Institute, 2012; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 2003; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, 1989; and LeRoy Apker Award (APS) Recipient, 1982.

Dr. Milind Purohit is an experimental particle physicist with research, teaching, and leadership experience on many experiments and in an administrative context at several institutions. These include the California Institute of Technology, Fermilab, Princeton University, and the University of South Carolina. His professional interest has been in the study of charm and bottom quarks as well as in the physics of neutrinos. He has been co-spokesperson of a major experiment at Fermilab (E791) for over 15 years, has participated in and chaired university-wide committees at South Carolina, and chaired the Department of Physics and Astronomy there for five years. In the year 2012, he was part of a team that published evidence of the only predicted but unseen fundamental particle that had yet to be observed: the Higgs boson. As a student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in the early 1970s, Purohit completed undergraduate and Master’s work that continued with his work at Caltech. At Fermilab he computed the effects of another significant fundamental particle, the gluon, in photon-hadron interactions and collected and studied data to determine the spin of the gluon, which is fundamental to the Standard Model.

Prof. Tejinder Singh Virdee is distinguished for his crucial role, over the last 30 years, in the design, construction, and physics exploitation of the Compact Muon Solenoid at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, one of two experiments that made the ground-breaking discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. Prof. Virdee carried out his graduate studies at Imperial College London on an experiment conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre, Stanford. Since 1979 he has worked on experiments at CERN including on the UA1 proton-antiproton collider experiment that discovered the mediators of the weak interaction, the W and Z bosons. He is one of the conceivers and founders of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the LHC. Prof. Virdee pioneered some of the techniques used in the CMS experiment that were crucial for the discovery of the Higgs boson. He was the leader of the CMS Collaboration for three years, from 2007, that included the start of collision data taking, and was its deputy leader from 1993 to 2006. Beyond his innovative work in particle physics, he is also a campaigner for science, and education in Africa and India. His work has been recognized by numerous awards – including Fellowship of the Royal Society, the Fundamental Physics Prize, the UK Institute of Physics Chadwick and Glazebrook Medals & Prizes, the European Physical Society HEPP Prize, the American Physical Society Panofsky Prize and the Blaise Pascal Medal in Physics from the European Academy of Sciences. In 2014, Prof. Virdee was knighted by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II for his achievements in science.

An Indian physicist and researcher, Prof. Ajay Sood is known for his pioneering research findings on graphene and nanotechnology as well as soft condensed matter, with a strong focus on innovative experiments. He is currently an Honorary Professor of Physics at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Prof. Sood earned his Master’s degree from the Punjab University. He went on to join the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, as a scientist. During this tenure, he obtained his Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Science.

A recipient of several fellowships, awards and honors, some of his notable recognitions have been: Padma Shri (2013); TWAS Prize in Physics, in 2000; Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, 1990, etc. He was the President of the Indian National Science Academy from 2017 to 2019, President of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 2010 to 2012 and the Secretary General of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) from 2013 to 2018. He is a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India. In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

An experimental physicist with interests in fundamental physics and tests of gravity and quantum mechanics, Dr. Rana Adhikari is recognized as one of the world’s top scientists in Life Sciences and fundamental Physics.

A graduate from the University of Florida, he went on to earn his Ph.D from MIT in 2004. One of the key member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) team, they made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves in 2015. His group focuses on further improving LIGO's measurements of black holes by exploring the limits of quantum measurements, and using those black holes to measure the shape of the universe.

Dr. Adhikari (along with Lisa Barsotti and Matthew Evans from MIT) was one of the six recipients of the New Horizons in Physics Prize, 2019. The New Horizons in Physics Prizes honors early-career achievements in physics and math.

Prof. Subir Sachdev’s research mainly specializes in condensed matter. It describes the connection between physical properties of modern quantum materials and the nature of quantum entanglement in the many-particle wave function. He has made extensive contributions to the description of the diverse varieties of entangled states of quantum matter. Many of these contributions have been linked to experiments, especially to the rich phase diagrams of the high temperature superconductors. He has also developed a connection between entanglement in quantum matter, and the properties of black holes in theories of quantum gravity.

He attended college at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; B.S. in Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University. He held professional positions at Bell Labs (1985–1987) and at Yale University (1987–2005), where he was a Professor of Physics, before returning to Harvard, where he is now the Herchel Smith Professor of Physics.

He has been elected to national academies of science in India and the U.S. and is a recipient of a number of awards and honors which include: Dirac Medals from the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), 2018, and University of New South Wales, 2015; Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society (APS), 2018; Abdus Salam Distinguished Lecturer, ICTP, Italy, 2014; Hendrik Lorentz Chair, Lorentz Institute, 2012; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 2003; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, February 1989; and LeRoy Apker Award (APS) Recipient, 1982.

Dr. Milind Purohit is an experimental particle physicist with research, teaching, and leadership experience on many experiments and in an administrative context at several institutions. These include the California Institute of Technology, Fermilab, Princeton University, and the University of South Carolina. His professional interest has been in the study of charm and bottom quarks as well as in the physics of neutrinos. He has been co-spokesperson of a major experiment at Fermilab (E791) for over 15 years, has participated in and chaired university-wide committees at South Carolina, and chaired the Department of Physics and Astronomy there for five years. In the year 2012, he was part of a team that published evidence of the only predicted but unseen fundamental particle that had yet to be observed: the Higgs boson. As a student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in the early 1970s, Purohit completed undergraduate and Master’s work that continued with his work at Caltech. At Fermilab he computed the effects of another significant fundamental particle, the gluon, in photon-hadron interactions and collected and studied data to determine the spin of the gluon, which is fundamental to the Standard Model.

Prof. Tejinder Singh Virdee is distinguished for his crucial role over the last 30 years, in the design, construction, and physics exploitation of the Compact Muon Solenoid at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, one of two experiments that made the ground-breaking discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. Prof. Virdee carried out his graduate studies at Imperial College London on an experiment conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre, Stanford. Since 1979 he has worked on experiments at CERN including on the UA1 proton-antiproton collider experiment that discovered the mediators of the weak interaction, the W and Z bosons. He is one of the conceivers and founders of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the LHC. Prof. Virdee pioneered some of the techniques used in the CMS experiment that were crucial for the discovery of the Higgs boson. He was the leader of the CMS Collaboration for three years, from 2007, that included the start of collision data taking, and was its deputy leader from 1993 to 2006. Beyond his innovative work in particle physics, he is also a campaigner for science, and education in Africa and India. His work has been recognized by numerous awards – including Fellowship of the Royal Society, the Fundamental Physics Prize, the UK Institute of Physics Chadwick and Glazebrook Medals & Prizes, the European Physical Society HEPP Prize and the American Physical Society Panofsky Prize. In 2014, Prof. Virdee was knighted by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II for his achievements in science.

Dr. A. R. Ravishankara is a University Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He was at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Division (CSD) of Earth System Research Laboratory for nearly 30 years in Boulder, CO. Dr. Ravishankara’s research has contributed substantially towards the fundamental understanding of the gas phase and surface chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere, and advanced the understanding of basic chemical processes and reaction rates related to ozone-layer depletion, climate change, and air pollution.

Dr. Ravishankara is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (London). He is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. His many awards include the Polanyi Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Stratospheric Ozone Protection award of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Chemical Society's award for Creative Advances in Environmental Sciences. He currently chairs the Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate of the NAS and serves on the scientific advisory panel of the Climate Clean Air Coalition.

Prof. Carol Robinson holds the Chair of Doctor Lee’s Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and is a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She is the first female Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and was previously the first female Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Prof. Robinson is renowned for pioneering the use of mass spectrometry as an analytical tool and for her ground-breaking research into the 3D structure of proteins.

Robinson went on to receive various awards and honors which include: American Society for Mass Spectrometry's Biemann Medal, 2003; Christian B. Anfinsen Award, 2008; Davy Medal, 2010; Royal Society’s prestigious Rosalind Franklin Award and Davey Medal, in 2004 and 2010, respectively; Interdisciplinary Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015; the European Laureate of the L’Oreal–UNESCO for Women in Science Award, 2015; and eight Honorary doctorates. In 2017, she was elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences and in July 2018 became President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK.

An Indian physicist and researcher, Prof. Sood is known for his pioneering research findings on graphene and nanotechnology as well as soft condensed matter, with a strong focus on innovative experiments. He is currently an Honorary Professor of Physics at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Prof. Sood earned his Master’s degree from the Punjab University. He went on to join the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, as a scientist. During this tenure, he obtained his Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Science.

A recipient of several fellowships, awards and honors, some of his notable recognitions have been: Padma Shri (2013); TWAS Prize in Physics, in 2000; Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, 1990, etc. He is currently the President of the Indian National Science Academy. He was the President of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 2010 to 2012 and the Secretary General of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) from 2013 to 2018. He is a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India. In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

An experimental physicist with interests in fundamental physics and tests of gravity and quantum mechanics, Dr. Adhikari is recognized as one of the world’s top scientists in Life Sciences and fundamental Physics.

A graduate from the University of Florida, he went on to earn his Ph.D from MIT in 2004. One of the key member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) team, they made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves in 2015. His group focuses on further improving LIGO's measurements of black holes by exploring the limits of quantum measurements, and using those black holes to measure the shape of the universe.

Dr. Adhikari (along with Lisa Barsotti and Matthew Evans from MIT) were one of the 6 recipients of the New Horizons in Physics Prize, 2019. The New Horizons in Physics Prizes honors early-career achievements in physics and math.

Prof. Sachdev’s research mainly specializes in condensed matter. It describes the connection between physical properties of modern quantum materials and the nature of quantum entanglement in the many-particle wave function. He has made extensive contributions to the description of the diverse varieties of entangled states of quantum matter. Many of these contributions have been linked to experiments, especially to the rich phase diagrams of the high temperature superconductors. He has also developed a connection between entanglement in quantum matter, and the properties of black holes in theories of quantum gravity.

He attended college at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; B.S. in Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University. He held professional positions at Bell Labs (1985–1987) and at Yale University (1987–2005), where he was a Professor of Physics, before returning to Harvard, where he is now the Herchel Smith Professor of Physics. He also holds visiting positions as the Cenovus Energy James Clerk Maxwell Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the Dr. Homi J. Bhabha Chair Professorship at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

He is a recipient of a number of awards and honors which include: Dirac Medals from the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), 2018, and University of New South Wales, 2015; Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society (APS), 2018; Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2014; Abdus Salam Distinguished Lecturer, ICTP, Italy, 2014; Hendrik Lorentz Chair, Lorentz Institute, 2012; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 2003; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, February 1989; and LeRoy Apker Award (APS) Recipient, 1982.

Dr. A. R. Ravishankara is a University Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He was at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Division (CSD) of Earth System Research Laboratory for nearly 30 years in Boulder, CO. Dr. Ravishankara’s research has contributed substantially towards the fundamental understanding of the gas phase and surface chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere, and advanced the understanding of basic chemical processes and reaction rates related to ozone-layer depletion, climate change, and air pollution.

Dr. Ravishankara is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, as well as Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. His many awards include the Polanyi Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Stratospheric Ozone Protection award of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Chemical Society's award for Creative Advances in Environmental Sciences.

Prof. Carol Robinson holds the Chair of Doctor Lee’s Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and is a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She is the first female Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and was previously the first female Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Prof. Robinson is renowned for pioneering the use of mass spectrometry as an analytical tool and for her ground-breaking research into the 3D structure of proteins.

Robinson went on to receive various awards and honors which include: American Society for Mass Spectrometry's Biemann Medal, 2003; Christian B. Anfinsen Award, 2008; Davy Medal, 2010; Royal Society’s prestigious Rosalind Franklin Award and Davey Medal, in 2004 and 2010, respectively; Interdisciplinary Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015; the European Laureate of the L’Oreal–UNESCO for Women in Science Award, 2015; and eight Honorary doctorates. In 2017, she was elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences and in July 2018 became President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK.

Former director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Professor J. N. Goswami is also referred to as the 'moon man of India'. He held different positions at PRL where he moved from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1973 and currently at PRL as a J C Bose Fellow. Prof. Goswami was the principal scientist of India's moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, and was involved in formulation of the Science goals of the Mars Orbiter Mission. He chaired the Science Advisory board that formulated the mission plan and the scientific payloads on board the upcoming Chandrayaan-2 mission.

His research covers planetary Sciences, origin and early evolution of the solar system, solar-stellar relationship, and Geo-chronology.

Prof. Goswami has spent several years at the University of California, Berkeley, and at San Diego, for post-doctoral research. Over the years he has visited Washington University, St. Louis, Vernadsky Institute, Moscow, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, and Max-Planck Institute, Mainz, for extended periods for conducting collaborative and independent research.

He has received various awards and honors that include INSA Young Scientist award, Young Associate of Indian Academy of Sciences, the NASA group achievement award and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in earth and planetary sciences. Prof. Goswami is currently a fellow of all the three science academies in India and also served as council member of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad. He is an elected fellow of several international forums that include Meteoritical Society, Geochemical Society of USA, European Association of Geochemistry, The World Academy of Sciences and International Astronautical Academy. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, London and past President of the Astronomical Society of India. He was bestowed the "Axford Medal" of the Asia-Oceania Geosciences Society and a recipient of "ISRO outstanding Achievement Award". He has received the coveted civilian award "Padma Shri" from the President of India in 2017 for his contribution in the field of Science & Technology.

Prof. Sachdev’s research mainly specializes in condensed matter. It describes the connection between physical properties of modern quantum materials and the nature of quantum entanglement in the many-particle wave function. He has made extensive contributions to the description of the diverse varieties of entangled states of quantum matter. Many of these contributions have been linked to experiments, especially to the rich phase diagrams of the high temperature superconductors. He has also developed a connection between entanglement in quantum matter, and the properties of black holes in theories of quantum gravity.

He attended college at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; B.S. in Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University. He held professional positions at Bell Labs (1985–1987) and at Yale University (1987–2005), where he was a Professor of Physics, before returning to Harvard, where he is now the Herchel Smith Professor of Physics. He also holds visiting positions as the Cenovus Energy James Clerk Maxwell Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the Dr. Homi J. Bhabha Chair Professorship at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

He is a recipient of a number of awards and honors which include: Dirac Medals from the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), 2018, and University of New South Wales, 2015; Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society (APS), 2018; Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2014; Abdus Salam Distinguished Lecturer, ICTP, Italy, 2014; Hendrik Lorentz Chair, Lorentz Institute, 2012; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 2003; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, February 1989; and LeRoy Apker Award (APS) Recipient, 1982.

Dr. A. R. Ravishankara is a University Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He was at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Division (CSD) of Earth System Research Laboratory for nearly 30 years in Boulder, CO. Dr. Ravishankara’s research has contributed substantially towards the fundamental understanding of the gas phase and surface chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere, and advanced the understanding of basic chemical processes and reaction rates related to ozone-layer depletion, climate change, and air pollution.

Dr. Ravishankara is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, as well as Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. His many awards include the Polanyi Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Stratospheric Ozone Protection award of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Chemical Society's award for Creative Advances in Environmental Sciences.

Professor Nityananda is a physicist who has worked in areas of optics and condensed matter, and image processing Gravitational lensing, and galaxy dynamics. He worked at the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, from 1975-2000. He then joined at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, first as Centre Director of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics from 2000-2010, and then as Centre Director at the TIFR Centre for interdisciplinary science, Hyderabad (2011-2012). He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in physics and astronomy at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and the IISERs at Pune and Mohali He is now with the School of liberal studies at Azim Premji University, teaching physics and mathematics courses to undergraduates.

He has been the Chief Editor of the physics and astronomy journals of the Indian Academy of Sciences and currently serves as Chief Editor of "Resonance", the Academy's Journal of Science Education. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (1986). Indian National Science Academy (1998), and the National Academy of Sciences (2000). He received “the Kariamanikkam Srinivasa Krishnan Memorial Lecture Award, from INSA in 2004. He has served on the Steering Committee of the Australia Telescope National Facility, President of the Astronomical Society of India, and as the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli.

Professor Carol Robinson holds the Chair of Doctor Lee’s Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and is a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She is the first female Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and was previously the first female Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Prof. Robinson is renowned for pioneering the use of mass spectrometry as an analytical tool and for her ground-breaking research into the 3D structure of proteins. She was the recipient of the Royal Society’s prestigious Rosalind Franklin Award and Davey Medal, in 2004 and 2010, respectively. In 2015, Prof. Robinson was the European Laureate of the L’Oreal–UNESCO for Women in Science Award.

Former director of the Physical Research Laboratory, Professor J. N. Goswami is also referred to as the ‘moon man of India’. He held different positions at PRL where he moved from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1973 and currently at PRL as a J C Bose Fellow. Prof. Goswami was the principal scientist of India’s moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, and currently involved in the Mars Orbiter Mission and upcoming Chandrayaan-2 mission in advisory capacity. His research covers planetary Sciences, origin and early evolution of the solar system, solar-stellar relationship, and Geochronology. Prof. Goswami has spent several years at the University of California, Berkeley, and at San Diego, for post-doctoral research. Over the years he has visited Washington University, St. Louis, Vernadsky Institute, Moscow, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, and Max-Planck Institute, Mainz, for extended periods for conducting collaborative and independent research.

He has received various awards and honors that include INSA Young Scientist award, Young Associate of Indian Academy of Sciences, the NASA group achievement award and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in earth and planetary sciences. Prof. Goswami is currently a fellow of all the three science academies in India and also served as council member of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad. He is an elected fellow of several international forums that include Meteoritical Society, Geochemical Society of USA, European Association of Geochemistry, The World Academy of Sciences and International Astronautical Academy. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, London and past President of the Astronomical Society of India. He was bestowed the "Axford Medal" of the Asia-Oceania Geosciences Society and a recipient of "ISRO outstanding Achievement Award". He has received the coveted civilian award "Padma Shri" from the President of India in 2017 for his contribution in the field of Science & Technology".

Professor Wadia is a theoretical physicist with significant contributions to high energy physics, string theory and quantum field theory. He has been awarded the Steven Weinberg Prize of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, 1995, the TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences) Physics Prize, 2004, the J.C. Bose Fellowship, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, 2006, the Distinguished Alumnus Xavier's College, Bombay University, 2009. He is a Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, India, elected 1992, Fellow, Indian National Science Academy, Delhi, India, elected 1997, Fellow, TWAS, Trieste, Italy, elected 2006.

Professor Nityananda is a physicist who has worked in areas of optics and condensed matter, and image processing Gravitational lensing, and galaxy dynamics. He worked at the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, from 1975-2000. He then joined at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, first as Centre Director of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics from 2000-2010, and then as Centre Director at the TIFR Centre for interdisciplinary science, Hyderabad (2011-2012). He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in physics and astronomy at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and the IISERs at Pune and Mohali He is now with the School of liberal studies at Azim Premji University, teaching physics and mathematics courses to undergraduates.

He has been the Chief Editor of the physics and astronomy journals of the Indian Academy of Sciences and currently serves as Chief Editor of "Resonance", the Academy's Journal of Science Education. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (1986). Indian National Science Academy (1998), and the National Academy of Sciences (2000). He received “the Kariamanikkam Srinivasa Krishnan Memorial Lecture Award, from INSA in 2004. He has served on the Steering Committee of the Australia Telescope National Facility, President of the Astronomical Society of India, and as the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli.

Dr. Richard Zare’s research is in the area of laser chemistry, resulting in a greater understanding of chemical reactions at the molecular level and contributing very significantly to solving a variety of problems in chemical analysis. His development of laser induced fluorescence as a method for studying reaction dynamics has been widely adopted in other laboratories. Awards include the U.S. National Medal of Science (1983), the Welch Award in Chemistry (1999), the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2005), the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences (2010), and the King Faisal International Prize in Science (2011). His memberships include the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Society, the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chemical Research Society of India, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) for developing countries. He has presented the Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology Lecture, IISc (2009), the Centenary Lecture, IISc (2014), the CV Raman Lecture, IACS (2014), and the Homi Bhabha Lecture TIFR (2014).

Former director of the Physical Research Laboratory, Professor J. N. Goswami is also referred to as the ‘moon man of India’. He held different positions at PRL where he moved from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1973 and currently at PRL as a J C Bose Fellow. Prof. Goswami was the principal scientist of India’s moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, and currently involved in the Mars Orbiter Mission and upcoming Chandrayaan-2 mission in advisory capacity. His research covers planetary Sciences, origin and early evolution of the solar system, solar-stellar relationship, and Geochronology.

Prof. Goswami has spent several years at the University of California, Berkeley, and at San Diego, for post-doctoral research. Over the years he has visited Washington University, St. Louis, Vernadsky Institute, Moscow, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, and Max-Planck Institute, Mainz, for extended periods for conducting collaborative and independent research.

He has received various awards and honors that include INSA Young Scientist award, Young Associate of Indian Academy of Sciences, the NASA group achievement award and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in earth and planetary sciences. Prof. Goswami is currently a fellow of all the three science academies in India and also served as council member of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad. He is an elected fellow of several international forums that include Meteoritical Society, Geochemical Society of USA, European Association of Geochemistry, The World Academy of Sciences and International Astronautical Academy. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, London and past President of the Astronomical Society of India. He was bestowed the "Axford Medal" of the Asia-Oceania Geosciences Society and a recipient of "ISRO outstanding Achievement Award"

Professor Wadia is a theoretical physicist with significant contributions to high energy physics, string theory and quantum field theory. He has been awarded the Steven Weinberg Prize of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, 1995, the TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences) Physics Prize, 2004, the J.C. Bose Fellowship, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, 2006, the Distinguished Alumnus Xavier's College, Bombay University, 2009. He is a Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, India, elected 1992, Fellow, Indian National Science Academy, Delhi, India, elected 1997, Fellow, TWAS, Trieste, Italy, elected 2006.

Professor Mehta is a leading researcher in the area of chemical Sciences who obtained his PhD from Pune University and carried out postdoctoral research at Michigan and Ohio State University. He started his professional career at IIT Kanpur, then moved to University of Hyderabad where he became the Vice Chancellor during the period 1994-1998. Subsequently, he served as the Director of IISc, Bangalore for seven years (1998-2005). He remained attached with the Department of Organic Chemistry at IISc as CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow (2005-2010) following which he has taken up his present position at University of Hyderabad.

Professor Mehta has made wide ranging research contributions in organic chemistry that encompass synthesis of biologically active and architecturally challenging natural products, creation of new and aesthetically pleasing molecular entities and incisive probing of stereoelectronic effects. His forays into synthesis have been marked by brevity, conceptual novelty and originality and his flair for devising simple solutions to complex and challenging problems of contemporary interest in organic synthesis have drawn attention internationally. In addition, he has made significant contribution to science education, science policy and planning and management of higher education in India.

Professor Mehta is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of all the three Science Academies in India and Third World Academy of Sciences and was the President of INSA. He is a recipient of Padma Shri from the President of India and has been conferred with "Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur" by the President of France. He had been offered several Visiting and Guest Appointments in leading Universities, has received over 30 medals/awards and numerous Honorary Doctorate degrees. He is on the Editorial Boards of many leading international journals in Chemical Sciences/Organic Chemistry.

Sriram works on nonequilibrium, soft-matter and biological physics, including: the collective behaviour of self-driven particles; the glass transition; complex fluid flow; how quantum matter thermalises; and ecological phase transitions. His first research papers were on general relativity.

He completed his schooling at the Modern School, New Delhi, in 1973 and obtained his B.S. in Physics from the University of Maryland in 1977. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1983 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, 1983-86. He is currently Senior Professor and Centre Director at the TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad, on leave from the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science where he has worked since May 1986. He is an honorary faculty member of the JNCASR, Bangalore.

Professor Mehta is a leading researcher in the area of chemical Sciences who obtained his PhD from Pune University and carried out postdoctoral research at Michigan and Ohio State University. He started his professional career at IIT Kanpur, then moved to University of Hyderabad where he became the Vice Chancellor during the period 1994-1998. Subsequently, he served as the Director of IISc, Bangalore for seven years (1998-2005). He remained attached with the Department of Organic Chemistry at IISc as CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow (2005-2010) following which he has taken up his present position at University of Hyderabad.

Professor Mehta has made wide ranging research contributions in organic chemistry that encompass synthesis of biologically active and architecturally challenging natural products, creation of new and aesthetically pleasing molecular entities and incisive probing of stereoelectronic effects. His forays into synthesis have been marked by brevity, conceptual novelty and originality and his flair for devising simple solutions to complex and challenging problems of contemporary interest in organic synthesis have drawn attention internationally. In addition, he has made significant contribution to science education, science policy and planning and management of higher education in India.

Professor Mehta is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of all the three Science Academies in India and Third World Academy of Sciences and was the President of INSA. He is a recipient of Padma Shri from the President of India and has been conferred with

Professor Mehta is a leading researcher in the area of chemical Sciences who obtained his PhD from Pune University and carried out postdoctoral research at Michigan and Ohio State University. He started his professional career at IIT Kanpur, then moved to University of Hyderabad where he became the Vice Chancellor during the period 1994-1998. Subsequently, he served as the Director of IISc, Bangalore for seven years (1998-2005). He remained attached with the Department of Organic Chemistry at IISc as CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow (2005-2010) following which he has taken up his present position at University of Hyderabad.

Professor Mehta has made wide ranging research contributions in organic chemistry that encompass synthesis of biologically active and architecturally challenging natural products, creation of new and aesthetically pleasing molecular entities and incisive probing of stereoelectronic effects. His forays into synthesis have been marked by brevity, conceptual novelty and originality and his flair for devising simple solutions to complex and challenging problems of contemporary interest in organic synthesis have drawn attention internationally. In addition, he has made significant contribution to science education, science policy and planning and management of higher education in India.

Professor Mehta is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of all the three Science Academies in India and Third World Academy of Sciences and was the President of INSA. He is a recipient of Padma Shri from the President of India and has been conferred with "Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur" by the President of France. He had been offered several Visiting and Guest Appointments in leading Universities, has received over 30 medals/awards and numerous Honorary Doctorate degrees. He is on the Editorial Boards of many leading international journals in Chemical Sciences/Organic Chemistry.

Professor Mehta is a leading researcher in the area of chemical Sciences who obtained his PhD from Pune University and carried out postdoctoral research at Michigan and Ohio State University. He started his professional career at IIT Kanpur, then moved to University of Hyderabad where he became the Vice Chancellor during the period 1994-1998. Subsequently, he served as the Director of IISc, Bangalore for seven years (1998-2005). He remained attached with the Department of Organic Chemistry at IISc as CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow (2005-2010) following which he has taken up his present position at University of Hyderabad.

Professor Mehta has made wide ranging research contributions in organic chemistry that encompass synthesis of biologically active and architecturally challenging natural products, creation of new and aesthetically pleasing molecular entities and incisive probing of stereoelectronic effects. His forays into synthesis have been marked by brevity, conceptual novelty and originality and his flair for devising simple solutions to complex and challenging problems of contemporary interest in organic synthesis have drawn attention internationally. In addition, he has made significant contribution to science education, science policy and planning and management of higher education in India.

Professor Mehta is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of all the three Science Academies in India and Third World Academy of Sciences and was the President of INSA. He is a recipient of Padma Shri from the President of India and has been conferred with

Prof. Gray, after graduate work at Northwestern University and postdoctoral research at the University of Copenhagen, joined the chemistry faculty at Columbia University, where in the early 1960s he developed ligand field theory to interpret the electronic structures and substitution reactions of metal complexes. After moving to Caltech in 1966, he began work in biological inorganic chemistry and solar photochemistry, including the development of inorganic systems for energy storage. Working with Ru-modified proteins in the early 1980s, he demonstrated that electrons can tunnel rapidly over long molecular distances through folded polypeptide structures; and, in the years following, he and J. R. Winkler developed laser flash-quench methods that opened the way for experimental investigations that have led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of electron flow through proteins that function in respiration and photosynthesis. Gray has published over 750 research papers and 17 books. He has received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan (1986); the Pauling Medal (1986); the Linderstrøm-Lang Prize (1992); the Gibbs Medal (1992); the Harvey Prize (2000); the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (2003); the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2004); the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2004); the City of Florence Prize in Molecular Sciences (2006); the Welch Award in Chemistry (2009); six national awards from the American Chemical Society, including the Priestley Medal (1991); and 16 honorary doctorates, including ones from Pennsylvania, Chicago, Columbia, Florence, Copenhagen, and Edinburgh. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Philosophical Society; a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Royal Society of Great Britain; and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation since 1994.

Prof. Ramakrishnan is known for his work in the field of Condensed Matter Physics eg. localization of electrons in disordered systems and the theory of freezing of fluids. His present interests are in the areas of strongly correlated electron systems and high temperature superconductivity. Ramakrishnan is the recipient of several national and international awards including the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award for Physical Sciences in 1982 and the Trieste Science Prize in 2005. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy , New Delhi (1984),and the Royal Society, London (2000). He is also a Foreign Member of the French Academy of Sciences (2005) and a past president of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore ( 2004-2006).

Prof. Narayan is internationally recognized for his contributions to a variety of areas in astrophysics, including accretion disks, active galactic nuclei, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, gravitational lensing, image processing, interstellar scattering, pulsars, and X-ray binaries. In the area of black holes, he has obtained strong evidence for the existence of the

Prof. McKenzie has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the lithosphere, particularly Plate Tectonics and Sedimentary Basin Formation. This seminal work resulted in McKenzie being awarded the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He has recently focused on the study of lithospheres of Venus, Mars and Moon and separately to understand the nature of melts. McKenzie is Fellow of the Royal Society.

Prof. Wilczek received his B.S. degree from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He taught at Princeton from 1974–81. He was the Chancellor Robert Huttenback Professor of Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1981–88, and the first permanent member of the National Science Foundation's Institute for Theoretical Physics. He has received UNESCO's Dirac Medal, the American Physical Society's Sakurai Prize, the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society , the Michelson Prize from Case Western University, and the Lorentz Medal of the Netherlands Academy for his contributions to the development of theoretical physics. In 2004 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics as a graduate student for his work on asymptotic freedom (essential in understanding strong forces), and in 2005 the King Faisal Prize. Wilczek's contribution include the invention of axions, development of quantum chromodynamics and exploration of new kinds of quantum statistics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Trustee of the University of Chicago. Two of his pieces have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing (2003, 2005).

Professor T. V. Ramakrishnan is known for his work in the field of Condensed Matter Physics eg localization of electrons in disordered systems and the theory of freezing of fluids. His present interests are in the areas of strongly correlated electron systems and high temperature superconductivity. Ramakrishnan is the recipient of several national and international awards including the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award for Physical Sciences in 1982 and the Trieste Science Prize in 2005. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy , New Delhi (1984),and the Royal Society, London (2000). He is also a Foreign Member of the French Academy of Sciences (2005) and a past president of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore ( 2004-2006).

After graduate work at Northwestern University and postdoctoral research at the University of Copenhagen, he joined the chemistry faculty at Columbia University, where in the early 1960s he developed ligand field theory to interpret the electronic structures and substitution reactions of metal complexes. After moving to Caltech in 1966, he began work in biological inorganic chemistry and solar photochemistry, including the development of inorganic systems for energy storage. Working with Ru-modified proteins in the early 1980s, he demonstrated that electrons can tunnel rapidly over long molecular distances through folded polypeptide structures; and, in the years following, he and J. R. Winkler developed laser flash-quench methods that opened the way for experimental investigations that have led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of electron flow through proteins that function in respiration and photosynthesis. Gray has published over 750 research papers and 17 books. He has received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan (1986); the Pauling Medal (1986); the Linderstrøm-Lang Prize (1992); the Gibbs Medal (1992); the Harvey Prize (2000); the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (2003); the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2004); the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2004); the City of Florence Prize in Molecular Sciences (2006); the Welch Award in Chemistry (2009); six national awards from the American Chemical Society, including the Priestley Medal (1991); and 16 honorary doctorates, including ones from Pennsylvania, Chicago, Columbia, Florence, Copenhagen, and Edinburgh. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Philosophical Society; a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Royal Society of Great Britain; and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation since 1994.

Prof. Narayan is internationally recognized for his contributions to a variety of areas in astrophysics, including accretion disks, active galactic nuclei, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, gravitational lensing,image processing, interstellar scattering, pulsars, and X-ray binaries. In the area of black holes, he has obtained strong evidence for the existence of the "event horizon", the one-way membrane which "vacuums up" energy from its surroundings. He has also developed methods to measure the spin parameters of black holes using observations from major ground- and space-based telescopes, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Prof. Narayan has been a professor at Harvard University for 20 years, serving as chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department from 1997 to 2001. He has been awarded a Presidential Young Investigator award from the NSF, and has delivered a number of named lectures, including the Darwin Lecture at the Royal Astronomical Society of London (2002). Prof. Narayan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (2006) and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009).

Prof. McKenzie has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the lithosphere, particularly Plate Tectonics and Sedimentary Basin Formation. This seminal work resulted in McKenzie being awarded the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He has recently focused on the study of lithospheres of Venus, Mars and Moon and separately to understand the nature of melts. McKenzie is Fellow of the Royal Society.

After graduate work at Northwestern University and postdoctoral research at the University of Copenhagen, he joined the chemistry faculty at Columbia University, where in the early 1960s he developed ligand field theory to interpret the electronic structures and substitution reactions of metal complexes. After moving to Caltech in 1966, he began work in biological inorganic chemistry and solar photochemistry, including the development of inorganic systems for energy storage. Working with Ru-modified proteins in the early 1980s, he demonstrated that electrons can tunnel rapidly over long molecular distances through folded polypeptide structures; and, in the years following, he and J. R. Winkler developed laser flash-quench methods that opened the way for experimental investigations that have led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of electron flow through proteins that function in respiration and photosynthesis. Gray has published over 750 research papers and 17 books. He has received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan (1986); the Pauling Medal (1986); the Linderstrøm-Lang Prize (1992); the Gibbs Medal (1992); the Harvey Prize (2000); the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (2003); the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2004); the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2004); the City of Florence Prize in Molecular Sciences (2006); the Welch Award in Chemistry (2009); six national awards from the American Chemical Society, including the Priestley Medal (1991); and 16 honorary doctorates, including ones from Pennsylvania, Chicago, Columbia, Florence, Copenhagen, and Edinburgh. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Philosophical Society; a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Royal Society of Great Britain; and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation since 1994.

Prof. Wilczek received his B.S. degree from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He taught at Princeton from 1974–81. He was the Chancellor Robert Huttenback Professor of Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1981–88, and the first permanent member of the National Science Foundation's Institute for Theoretical Physics. He has received UNESCO's Dirac Medal, the American Physical Society's Sakurai Prize, the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society , the Michelson Prize from Case Western University, and the Lorentz Medal of the Netherlands Academy for his contributions to the development of theoretical physics. In 2004 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics as a graduate student for his work on asymptotic freedom (essential in understanding strong forces), and in 2005 the King Faisal Prize. Wilczek's contribution include the invention of axions, development of quantum chromodynamics and exploration of new kinds of quantum statistics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Trustee of the University of Chicago. Two of his pieces have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing (2003, 2005).

Professor T. V. Ramakrishnan is known for his work in the field of Condensed Matter Physics eg localization of electrons in disordered systems and the theory of freezing of fluids. His present interests are in the areas of strongly correlated electron systems and high temperature superconductivity. Ramakrishnan is the recipient of several national and international awards including the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award for Physical Sciences in 1982 and the Trieste Science Prize in 2005. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy , New Delhi (1984),and the Royal Society, London (2000). He is also a Foreign Member of the French Academy of Sciences (2005) and a past president of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore ( 2004-2006).

Prof. Narlikar is a theoretical physicist widely known for fundamental contributions to astrophysics and cosmology. Along with Sir Fred Hoyle Narlikar proposed an alternative to the Big Bang theory. He headed an international team which undertook and found evidence for micro-organisms in the stratosphere. An intriguing possibility is that the organisms could have arrived from space. Narlikar has authored or co-authored a hundred books (professional, science popularization, fiction). Narlikar is a member of three Indian academies of sciences and Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences.

Prof. McKenzie has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the lithosphere, particularly Plate Tectonics and Sedimentary Basin Formation. This seminal work resulted in McKenzie being awarded the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He has recently focused on the study of lithospheres of Venus, Mars and Moon and separately to understand the nature of melts. McKenzie is Fellow of the Royal Society.

Prof. Sreenivasan is well known for wide-ranging contributions to physics and engineering: turbulence in fluids (especially the application of fractals and multifractals), reacting flows, cryogenic helium and nonlinear dynamics. He is Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences, member of the US National Academy of Engineering, member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy, among others. He has received a number of awards and honors, including, most recently, the 2008 Nicholson Medal from the American Physical Society.

Prof. Wilczek received his B.S. degree from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He taught at Princeton from 1974–81. He was the Chancellor Robert Huttenback Professor of Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1981–88, and the first permanent member of the National Science Foundation's Institute for Theoretical Physics. He has received UNESCO's Dirac Medal, the American Physical Society's Sakurai Prize, the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society , the Michelson Prize from Case Western University, and the Lorentz Medal of the Netherlands Academy for his contributions to the development of theoretical physics. In 2004 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics as a graduate student for his work on asymptotic freedom (essential in understanding strong forces), and in 2005 the King Faisal Prize. Wilczek's contribution include the invention of axions, development of quantum chromodynamics and exploration of new kinds of quantum statistics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Trustee of the University of Chicago. Two of his pieces have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing (2003, 2005).