Will any one of the country's thousands of young molecular biology scientists win this year's grand prize or the regional life sciences awards set up by GE and Science?
Co-sponsors, medical equipment major GE Healthcare Life Sciences and the journal Science, have opened the entries for the 16th annual award for young life scientists from across the globe. The prestigious award recognises promising postgraduate researchers who have completed their PhDs in molecular biology in 2010 and the deadline closes on August 1, 2011, a release from GE said.
The overall global grand award is for $ 25,000 and the winner's essay on the thesis gets published in the prestigious journal. This and the four regional prizes were instituted in 1995.
Dr Suvendra Bhattacharyya who won the regional prize for 2004 is the lone Indian winner.
Mr Anurag Gupta, General Manager - GE Healthcare Lifesciences, India, said, “I would like to encourage all researchers in India who completed a Ph.D in molecular biology to submit an application for the GE and Science prize. Life sciences is becoming increasingly important in India – both to our rapidly developing pharmaceutical industry and to the efforts to improve the health of the Indian people.”
The winners will be awarded at a ceremony in December in Stockholm, where they get to mingle with Nobel laureates, the release said. The 75 past winners “have made an impact in life sciences research and have used the prize as a stepping-stone in their scientific research careers.”
Mr Kieran Murphy, President and CEO of GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said “By encouraging scientific progress in our understanding of genes and proteins, the prize is contributing to the global research effort to tackle some of healthcare's most pressing challenges.” Supporting young scientists was vital to the future of molecular biology, said Ms Monica Bradford, Executive Editor, Science.