President Droupadi Murmu confers first-ever Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar

New Delhi: President Droupadi Murmu on Thursday conferred the first-ever Vigyan Ratna Puraskar -– India’s top most science award -- on noted biochemist and former director of the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science Govindrajan Padmanabhan.

At an award ceremony in the Ganatantra Mandapam of Rashtrapati Bhawan, the President also conferred 13 Vigyan Shri Puraskar, 18 Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prizes and one Vigyan Team award, marking the first investiture ceremony for science awards. The team of scientists and engineers who worked on the Chandrayaan-3 mission were honoured with the Vigyan Team award, which was received by project director of the mission P Veeramuthuvel. All the awardees received a medal and a citation for their outstanding achievements in their respective fields. Annapurni Subramaniam, director of Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics; Anandharamakrishnan C, director of Thiruvananthapuram-based National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science and Technology; Avesh Kumar Tyagi, director of the chemistry group at the Bhabha Atomic Research Institute; Syed Wajih Ahmad Naqvi of Lucknow-based CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute were among the 13 recipients of the Vigyan Shri awards.

Biologist Umesh Varshney from Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science; Jayant Bhalchandra Udgaonkar of the Pune-base Indian Institute of Science Education and Research; Bhim Singh, emeritus professor of IIT-Delhi; Sanjay Behari, director of the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology; Adimurth Adi of IIT-Kanpur, Rahul Mukherjee of IIM-Kolkata also received the Vigyan

Shri awards.