Dr Nishat Afroz receives the international award for research and innovation in medical sciences
Aligarh:
Dr Nishat Afroz, Professor, Department of Pathology, JN Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has been honoured with the award of “Distinguished Researcher in Histopathology” for her contribution and achievement in the discipline of Health and Medical Sciences by the Venus International Foundation.
The award was bestowed upon her at the 10th Annual Research Meet – ARM 2024 on the theme “Diverse Approach to Address Societal Challenges and Deliver Novel Solutions”, organised by the Centre for Research and Innovation – Venus International Foundation at Chennai.
Earlier, Dr Nishat Afroz attended the Pathology Conferences at Subharti Medical College Meerut, Narayana hospital & RN Tagore Medical College, Kolkata and SMS Medical College, Jaipur as guest speaker and workshop convener.
source: http://www.radiancenews.com / Radiance News / Home> Pride of the Nation. Awards> Focus / by Radiance News Bureau / December 12th, 2024
Prof Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain’s scientific research has changed the complicated regimen for the diagnosis of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis and the Indian Basmati getting its patent and trademark in the UK in the fight against the Pakistani variant. This Bihar-born scientists’ findings have saved patients suffering from Drug-Resistant TB money and time and helped the Indian government and farmers earn through exports of the Basmati.
He told Awaz-the Voice in an interview that the government of India has taken at least two major policy decisions based on his research. “One decision was that previously the testing of tuberculosis (TB) was based upon antibody-antigen reaction. So, the antibody formed was based on the antigen of a bacterial protein, and the sequence (genetic) used was mostly European or American isolates.
“When I did sequencing in India, I found out that the Indian variant is completely different. Therefore, the test could give false positives or negatives…. I published this finding and had a meeting with the DG of ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research) and recommended that the tests based on foreign kits be banned and that made a big impact.”
The President, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam presenting Padma Shri to Prof. Seyed E. Hasnain, renowned biologist, at an Investiture Ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on March 29, 2006.
Padma Shri recipient Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain said. E. Hasnain was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the highest Civilian decoration of Germany in 2014. Nature, a famous scientific journal, reported on his receiving the award, “With the Order of Merit, he joins the league of outstanding personalities from various fields including Nobel laureate biologist Paul Herman Muller, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and music conductor John Crosby.”
In 2006, he received Padma Shri in recognition of his scientific work. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (1995) and J. C. Bose Fellowship (2006), two of the most prestigious Indian Awards in the field of science have also come his way apart from numerous other decorations.
Hasnain was born in Gaya, Bihar in 1954. He was born seven years after India had attained independence. At that time Bihar was not the most developed of the Indian states. Hasnain’s father was a college lecturer and he nursed a dream of studying abroad. He studied at the Nazareth Academy, an expensive school in the town. It’s said that almost 20% of his father’s salary would go into children’s school fees.
He did his M.Sc. from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. However, though he was selected for his post-graduation studies by Harvard University, for some reason he could not join.
In 1981, Hasnain moved to Canada as a Post-doctoral Fellow (PDF). He worked in Canada and the USA for the next six years. At this stage, his father asked him to return home to serve his country and people. He was advised by many people that he must try to get his green card before moving back to India.
Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain with Dr Venky Ramakrishna, Nobel Prize Winner and President of Royal Society, UK, in Cambridge
In 1987, he joined the National Institute of Immunology (NII) as a scientist. Hasnain says, “I thought that after getting a green card, I would have a fall-back and a plan B. I did not want a plan B. My plan was the only plan A. I will work in India and do something good in India.”
Hasnain broke the convention by not continuing the research he was doing abroad. He started afresh and soon made a name for himself in research of baculoviruses. He established a baculovirus insect cell expression system (BEVS) for the first time in India and used this to express foreign genes and also to ask fundamental questions concerning gene expression in BEVS. The idea was to make India a scientific power.
Hasnain says that when his career was at the peak with research on baculovirus one day, Dr. Sandeep Basu, the then director of NII, asked him, “Seyed, you are publishing in good journals, it is fine, but how does humanity benefit? What is India gaining out of it? How are the common men benefiting from your papers? Doing research is good but do something which will benefit the common man.”
This was the turning point in Hasnain’s life and career. He says “I decided to do something where I can do direct application.” He started his research on tuberculosis.
Seyed Ehtesham Hasnain at the Global Health Conference organized by the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, Halle, Germany
Hasnain initiated studies on molecular epidemiology and genetics of multi-drug resistant (MDR) M. tuberculosis (M.tb). He says, “second important observation that was published, again the first time in the world. We used to test TB for drug resistance. The bacteria was tested against each drug. I showed with my study that if the bacteria are resistant to one drug then it will be resistant to almost all other drugs. I established the correlation and proposed that you don’t need to do multi-drug resistance testing for all the drugs. Just test one drug rifampicin and if it is confirmed then 95%-99% of drugs will be resisted by the bacteria. That has become a standard treatment all over the world. He is still working on developing cheaper methods of diagnosing TB.
In 1999 Hasnain was invited as the first director of the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad. It was based on his work on Indian Basmati Rice DNA fingerprinting that India won the Patent case against Pakistan enabling the export of the Indian Basmati to the UK. This prevented a major economic loss to India. Subsequently, the Ministry of Commerce established the CDFD-APEDA Basmati DNA Analysis Centre, where all Basmati exports are certified.
Hasnain also served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad (2005-11), and Vice Chancellor of Hamdard University and is currently A National Science Chair of SERB, at the Department of Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology at IIT-Delhi.
Hasnain Mantra is: “Nothing is a substitute for hard work.”
source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Story / by Saquib Salim / November 03rd, 2023
Spirit of Engineering, published by ME alum Najeeb Kuzhiyil in December 2017, tells the story of two freshman college students and their journey to discover what engineering is. Image courtesy of Najeeb Kuzhiyil
A novel penned by a mechanical engineering alum tells the story of two freshmen college students and their journey to discover what engineering is.
“So I thought before you begin your undergrad studies, you should understand what engineering is in simple terms,” said Kuzhiyil. “I really wanted to write a book that was simple enough for high school students.”
The book took about a year and a half to write and started out as separate essays covering four pillars of engineering: methodical approach, practical skills, abstraction, and creativity.
“One morning I was lying in my bed and I thought why don’t I tell this as a story. I can include all of these concepts and wind them into a nice plot,” Kuzhiyil said.
The target audience for the book is high school students or perhaps even freshmen in college. The plot is set in modern times and follows around two main characters who are both first year engineering students at an unnamed Midwestern college: Matt from northern Iowa and Maya from India.
Matt and Maya come across a presentation about the Wright Brothers which piques their interest to the point that they decide to travel to the Wright Brothers museum in Dayton, Ohio in an attempt to better understand what engineering really is. During their travels they meet an experienced, middle-aged engineer who helps them understand how math, physics, and other natural phenomena apply to engineering.
Kuzhiyil said that his PhD advisor Robert C Brown, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, was a major influence on him personally and with his writing style specifically.
“He’s a wonderful engineer and he’s a great writer because we as engineers aren’t always great writers,” said Kuzhiyil. “Before coming to Iowa State I never paid attention to my English but Dr. Brown told us ‘You might be great engineers but you also have to learn how to write well. It’s very important to be able to express your ideas.’”
Brown, who also serves as director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State, wrote the foreword of the book. He said he thinks the book can be helpful for the next generation of engineers.
“I would have benefited from this book when I was in high school, at the time having no clear idea of the engineering profession. Even today despite the emphasis on STEM education, engineers are rarely portrayed in popular culture except for the occasional less than flattering role of bumbling technocrat. Najeeb’s book helps to overcome this stereotype,” Brown said.
Kuzhiyil cited Brown, whose research focuses on biorenewable resources, as a major reason why he chose Iowa State to pursue his PhD. Kuzhiyil is originally from the state of Kerala in southern India. He attended school in the city of Kochi and began developing an interest in chemical engineering in high school. He attributed his interest in engineering to his older brother, Dr. Abdul Kader, who studied chemistry and worked at a fertilizer manufacturing company.
“I didn’t know anything about chemical engineering, but as a kid I thought it would be cool to learn about it,” he said, adding there was a large petroleum refinery close to home that always fascinated him.
Kuzhiyil graduated with a bachelor of technology in chemical engineering from the University of Calicut and went on to work as a tech service engineer for Indian Oil Corporation.
After a decade in industry, Kuzhiyil decided to pursue an advanced degree. In graduate school his interest shifted from chemical engineering to renewable energy. He graduated with a MS in Combustion and Energy from the University of Leeds in England in 2005.
Kuzhiyil came to Iowa State in 2008 and was involved in various groups outside of his engineering studies, including serving as president of the Indian Students Association from 2009 to 2010. Despite spending just three years in Ames, Kuzhiyil said he made friends and memories that will last a lifetime.
“There were so many moments I really enjoyed at Iowa State,” said Kuzhiyil. “Our research group was so big we had people from all over the world. We had people from India, China, Europe, Africa, from all over and we had discussions on science, on politics, on life, on love, on everything. They were all great for me because different viewpoints and perspectives on different things were really insightful. I really had a blast and enjoyed every moment of my PhD.”
Kuzhiyil added that he loved the beauty of Iowa State’s campus, especially during the spring bloom, and that he enjoyed participating in the International Food Festival during the annual VEISHEA celebration.
After completing his PhD, he worked as a fuels and lubricants technologist at General Electric for six years. In November 2017, he was hired as a staff engineer in synthetic lubricants at ExxonMobil Corporation. His current work focuses on engine oils and gear oils and how it relates to fuel economy.
“By using synthetic lubricants we can improve fuel and the energy efficiency. Synthetics are more of a move toward a sustainable future,” Kuzhiyil said, adding that the job has been a nice marriage between his interests in chemical engineering and renewable energy.
During his career, Kuzhiyil has studied or worked on three different continents. He said that these diverse experiences have contributed to his professional development and have been helpful when approaching challenges.
“In engineering most of the problems we deal with are open-ended. There’s no single answer to many of the problems. You can design things in different ways so the engineer’s job is to design a product or a process or whatever, within the constraints of resources, environment, culture and weather. All of those factors play into the engineering,” said Kuzhiyil.
“Because I come from India, and I lived in Europe and the U.S., all of these places are different if you look at the available resources, the weather, the philosophy, etcetera. I really got a lot of examples of how the same product can be different on these three different continents and I think that’s been helpful in getting me to where I am today.”
source: http://www.news.engineering.iastate.edu / Iowa State University, College of Engineering / by Nick Fetty (headline edited) / April 02nd, 2018
Prof Nafees Ahmad Khan, Department of Botany, Aligarh Muslim University, has been declared as the Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI).
The National Academy of Sciences, recognises researchers who excel in the field of their research as Fellow of the Academy, which is considered as the most coveted accomplishment in academics.
Prof Khan has worked on the mechanisms of hormonal and nutritional regulation of plant development with emphasis on plant resilience against stressful environments using nutriomics and metabolomics.
He has published many research papers in crucial high Impact Factors journals and collaborated internationally for research. He has published about 200 research papers（H-index 67; i–10 index 175）and was noted as one of the most-cited Indian researchers in the area of Plant Science by Elsevier every year from 2019 to 2022.
He has edited 19 books published by Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Frontiers, NOVA, Alpha Science and others. Supervised research projects focused on signalling molecules-nutriomics and abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms, and served as Editor/Guest Editor of the leading plant science journals, published by Elsevier, Frontiers, Springer-Nature MDPI.
Prof Khan is also fellow of The Linnean Society, Indian Botanical Society, Indian Society for Plant Physiology.
source: http://www.amu.ac.in / Aligarh Muslim University / Home / by Public Relations Office / November 04th, 2022
Prof Kamal is also ranked 2nd in India in the subject of Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry.
New Delhi:
Professor Ahmed Kamal, Jamia Hamdard Pro-Vice Chancellor has been named among top 2 per cent cientists in the world by Stanford University.
Prof Ahmed Kamal has also been ranked among top 0.10 per cent scientists in India with 537 papers in his name and with a worldwide subject rank of 83 among scientists.
Prof Kamal is also ranked 2nd in India in the subject of Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry.
Prof Ahmed Kamal has been named among top scientists globally in the subject-wise analysis conducted by a team of scientists at Stanford University USA which was led by Dr. John PA Ioannidis.
The analyses used citations from Scopus with data assessing scientists for career-long citation impact up until the end of 2019 and for citation impact during the single calendar year.
Prof Ahmed Kamal has filed more than 368 patents. Five of his US patents that have been licensed to a pharmaceutical company and are under the process of clinical development.
Prof Kamal’s research interests mainly focus on the design and synthesis of gene-targeting compounds as new anti-cancer agents and their targeted delivery. He has designed and developed a large number of target based new molecules as potential cytotoxic agents for the treatment of various cancers mostly inspired from natural products. New chemical entities for anti-tubercular and anti-microbial activities are also his research avenues.
Prof Kamal is also proficient in the development of new efficient synthetic methodologies including solid phase, resin bound reagents and chemo-enzymatic strategies that are useful in both basic and applied pharmaceutical chemistry. He has won several honours and awards for his research work.
Prof Kamal has over 540 publications, more than 10000 citations, 30 review papers and 10 book chapters in the areas of medicinal chemistry and biocatalysis.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> Science & Technology / by Ummid.con News Network / November 03rd, 2020
