Five Odia Scientists Among Top 75 In India

Five Odia Scientists Among Top 75 In India

Odia scientists have always contributed immensely to the scientific community of the country and the world. They have consistently brought laurels to the state which has been proven time and again through various recognitions. Five scientists of Odisha have been named in the list of 75 winners under 50 years of age who have done outstanding work in the field of science and technology. This list has been prepared by the Union Ministry of Science and Information keeping in mind the importance of their work and the potential it has.

Bedangadas Mohanty, Professor and Dean of Faculty Affairs at the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar, is one of them.This physicist, fascinated by the mysteries of dark matter in the universe, has begun a detector development and testing programme in technical collaboration with various companies in an attempt to find the optimal thresholds for detection sensitivity for dark matter searches.

He was also a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2020 and JC Bose Fellow in 2016. In addition to these, he has been the recipient of many awards in the field of Physical Sciences. He received the highest ranking as a scientific associate at CERN and is now the official spokesperson of the India-STAR-ALICE partnership. 

Jyotiranjan S Ray, a teenager who was born in Naharkanta, on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, has won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 2015. His significant contributions to geology include the determination of the ages of the rocks of the Vindhya mountains, the Sylhet Traps, many Indian carbonatites, and the rocks of India’s only active volcano, Barren Island. In the Harappan heartland of north-western India, he has discovered the existence of the ancient river Saraswati. He hopes to extend his research into archaeology and anthropology. 

In this list, Jyotirmayee Dash, a professor at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) Kolkata, is included. Her research on artificial ion channels and anticancer drugs may lead to promising applications in drug delivery and development. Her most recent studies examine targeted drug delivery. Her team is attempting to selectively target a cancer cell with a synthesized substance. They are trying to understand the structure and function of cancer cells as well as how to selectively kill them.

Her work is mainly aimed at developing biodegradable polymers that can be used as carriers of drugs, or templates, for tissue regeneration. Her group of researchers now concentrates on the manufacturing of biomaterials for the bone micro-environment. Her research method is based on osteosarcoma and bone loss as a result of the tumor. 

Narayan Pradhan, a professor at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) Kolkata, is a synthetic chemist involved in manufacturing nanomaterials. He is well-known for his work in doped semiconductor nanocrystals with tunable optical properties. The list also includes Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla , an associate professor at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar. Although he lives in Odisha, he is from West Bengal.