TWAS Announces 2011 Prize Winners

Segenet KELEMU (Ethiopia), of the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) Hub at the International Livestock Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, and Zeyaur Rahman KHAN (India), of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), also in Nairobi, share the 2011 TWAS Prize in Agricultural Sciences. Kelemu is honoured for her discovery of beneficial endophytic fungi and bacteria in the tropical forage grass Brachiaria. Khan is recognized for his discovery and wide-scale implementation of the Push-Pull Technology – a pro-poor scientific innovation for enhancing food security and environmental sustainability in Africa.

Ana Belén ELGOYHEN (Argentina), of the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular (INGEBI-CONICET) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Valakunja NAGARAJA (India), of the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, share the 2011 TWAS Prize in Biology. Elgoyhen is honoured for her contributions to the understanding of the molecular basis of hearing. Nagaraja is recognized for his fundamental contributions to understanding the mechanisms of action of DNA transaction proteins and their cellular function.

Jairton DUPONT (Brazil), of the Institute of Chemistry of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and JIANG Lei (China), of the School of Chemistry and Environment of the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Beijing, China, share the 2011 TWAS Prize in Chemistry. Dupont is recognized for his pioneering contributions to our understanding of the synthesis and applications of non-aqueous ionic liquids. Jiang is honoured for his significant contribution to our understanding of the design of bio-inspired, smart, multiscale interfacial materials, especially controlling surface wettability.

S.K. SATHEESH (India), of the Indian Institute of Science's Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences in Bangalore, India, and WU Fuyuan (China), of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing, China, share the 2011 TWAS Prize for Earth Sciences. Satheesh is honoured for his outstanding contributions to our understanding of the impact of atmospheric aerosols on the radiation balance of the Earth-atmosphere system and climate. Wu is recognized for his outstanding research on petrogenesis of granite and lithospheric evolution in eastern China and technical developments of isotopic analysis by laser ablation.

Yi-bing LIN (Taiwan, China), of the College of Computer Science at National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, China, is the recipient of the 2011 TWAS Prize for Engineering Sciences. He is honoured for his significant contributions to the design and modeling of mobile telecommunications networks and for leadership in telecommunications education and regulation.

Shun-Jen CHENG (Taiwan, China), of the Institute of Mathematics of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, China, and Patricio Luis FELMER (Chile), of the Department of Mathematical Engineering at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile, share the 2011 TWAS Prize in Mathematics. Cheng is honoured for his work on a super duality that led to a complete and novel viewpoint of the representation theory of classical Lie superalgebras. Felmer is recognized for his outstanding contributions to Hamiltonian systems, singular perturbations theory and non-linear elliptic equations.

Alberto Rodolfo KORNBLIHTT (Argentina), of the Department of Physiology, Molecular and Cellular Biology in the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has won the 2011 TWAS Prize in the Medical Sciences for his seminal contributions to the regulation of alternative pre-mRNA splicing, an essential feature of gene expression that explains how a single gene generates multiple proteins.

Thanu PADMANABHAN (India), of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pune University in Ganeshkind, Pune, India, is the recipient of the 2011 TWAS Prize in Physics. He is recognized for developing a thermodynamical perspective in which gravity arises as an emergent phenomenon and for contributing significantly to our understanding of dark energy.