Food Security Winner

C. Anandharamakrishnan, PhD

CSIR – National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science & Technology

With nearly 30% of the population suffering from malnutrition and 7% affected by diabetes, management of hidden hunger and ensuring public health are urgent priorities for India. Therefore, there is an urgent need for solutions that address both malnutrition and health challenges.

C. Anandharamakrishnan, PhD, is a pioneer in food engineering research and has been working towards the development of innovative solutions to meet this dual challenge. Dr. Anandharamakrishnan’s proposes to develop rice fortified with multiple essential nutrients and rice designed to have a low glycemic index (GI), which could provide a healthier diet for the diabetic population. He will utilize advanced food technologies developed in his lab, including a 3-fluid nozzle spray drying process to efficiently encapsulate and deliver these nutrients in reconstituted rice. His lab has also developed Asia’s first engineered artificial gastrointestinal system, which his team uses to analyze nutrient release during digestion, ensuring the rice is optimized for maximum nutrient absorption and improved glycemic response.

The potential impact of this work is far-reaching. If successful, this fortified rice could provide a vital nutritional boost to millions of underserved people in India, while also providing a healthier diet for the diabetic population on a large scale. By addressing two major public health concerns simultaneously, Dr. Anandharamakrishnan’s work could pave the way for significant improvements in both nutrition and health conditions, with the potential to benefit not only India but also the 2 billion people worldwide who suffer from malnutrition.

Sustainability Winner

Amartya Mukhopadhyay, DPhil

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

With the urgent global need for sustainable energy solutions, the development of affordable, eco-friendly batteries is critical. In India, where key materials for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, such as lithium and cobalt, are scarce, sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries offer a promising alternative.

Amartya Mukhopadhyay, DPhil, is spearheading efforts to advance Na-ion battery technology, which is approximately 20-25% cheaper than Li-ion batteries, operates in a broader temperature range, and is safer to store. Prof. Mukhopadhyay’s recent breakthroughs in materials science, particularly in creating air- and water-stable sodium-transition metal oxide cathodes and alloy-based anodes, have made Na-ion batteries more practical and sustainable for various uses. Prof. Mukhopadhyay’s approach leverages another key innovation from his lab – “aqueous processing” of battery electrodes – which replaces toxic solvents with water to reduce costs and environmental impact. The first phase of his project focuses on scaling up this water-based process and fine-tuning the batteries to ensure high capacity and long-lasting performance. The second phase will involve producing prototype cells and exploring commercialization opportunities through technology transfer or startup ventures.

This work addresses India’s need for cost-effective, safe, and sustainable energy storage solutions, particularly for renewable energy applications. If successful, Na-ion batteries could reduce India’s reliance on imported materials and provide a greener, more affordable option for the country’s growing energy demands.

Healthcare Winner

Raghavan Varadarajan, PhD

Indian Institute of Science

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) causes severe respiratory illness in over 30 million people annually, disproportionately affecting infants, young children, and the elderly. Over 120,000 deaths are attributed to RSV each year, with more than 97% occurring in developing countries, including India. Despite the availability of new RSV vaccines, their high cost makes them inaccessible to the populations most at risk.

Raghavan Varadarajan, PhD, aims to develop an RSV vaccine that addresses these challenges. Dr. Varadarajan will draw upon his lab’s extensive expertise in protein structure and vaccine design to engineer an efficacious vaccine that will provide broad and long-lasting protection against infection by this devastating virus. Furthermore, by employing cutting-edge methods in protein design and stabilization, Dr. Varadarajan’s team is optimizing the vaccine formulation and production system, to potentially reduce the cost of each dose by up to 95%, compared to recently approved RSV vaccines.

These breakthroughs could make RSV vaccination accessible to the populations that need it most, significantly reducing RSV-related illness, hospitalizations, and saving lives. Dr. Varadarajan’s research underscores India’s growing leadership in affordable healthcare innovation, addressing critical public health challenges both locally and globally.

Food Security Winner

Shilpi Sharma, PhD

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Prof. Shilpi Sharma’s research program examines the various biotic and abiotic factors shaping microbial diversity in different ecosystems, and then develop strategies to support environmental sustainability. She is specially interested in the rich and dynamic zone surrounding the plant roots, rhizosphere, which harbours microbial communities that directly impact plant’s fitness. She is involved in the development of next generation agri-biologicals by harnessing the potential of the microbiome associated with plants, for mitigation of phytopathogens and abiotic stresses like salinity and drought. In her ambitious proposal, Shilpi plans to tap the natural potential of some soil to restrict the manifestation of plant diseases. She aims to transform disease-conducive soil by first characterizing the active microbial players and their mechanism of suppression of a range of phytopathogens, in naturally suppressive soil. Upon identifying the mechanisms at play, and generating a culture bank of potent biocontrol strains, she will design synthetic microbial communities to transform disease-conducive soil to suppressive soil. The synthetic microbial communities have an upper hand over the conventional bioinoculants routinely applied in agriculture, as they are more robust and efficient under natural conditions. The objectives will be met by bringing together conventional methods as well as state-of-art techniques like culturomics, metagenomics and metabolomics. Her work will be the first to map the natural suppressive potential of soil across six states of India, and to employ microbiome engineering to facilitate sustainable agriculture in the country and beyond.

Sustainability Winner

Purnananda Guptasarma, PhD

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali

Prof. Purnananda Guptasarma is developing new and more effective methods for the degradation of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic waste to its most fundamental building blocks, terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG). Despite early promise of their recyclability, only 9% of plastic products are recycled today, due to the difficulty of achieving purity of TPA, and maintaining quality over subsequent life cycles. Guptasarma has demonstrated a groundbreaking technique that utilizes enzymes, molecular tools that can perform chemical reactions, to break down solid PET into TPA and EG, by using one enzyme to efficiently degrade solid PET into TPA and other degradation intermediates that escape into solution, and another enzyme that remains in solution and convert the degradation intermediates into TPA and EG. The purity achieved by this use of synergy between carefully-selected enzymes leads to the formation of pure TPA in the laboratory, which can then be re-formed into new plastic from the ground up, theoretically enabling PET plastic recycling with near perfect efficiency. Guptasarma is now using bioprospecting approaches and a combination of rational and combinatorial protein improvement approaches involving protein engineering, biophysics and biochemistry, to enhance this method even further. The intention is to identify, improve and produce the best-performing enzymes in bulk quantities for the degradation of PET at pilot-scale beyond what has already been found to work in the laboratory.

Healthcare Winner

Anurag S. Rathore, PhD

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Prof. Anurag S. Rathore’s work aims to significantly reduce manufacturing costs and increase global accessibility for lifesaving biotherapeutics used to treat complex diseases including cancer and autoimmune diseases.Rathore has established India’s first and only state-of-the-art continuous processing facility and has successfully produced several biotherapeutics with an estimated 50-75% reduction in the cost of manufacturing. Importantly, Rathore’s team has established a novel approach that facilitates real-time monitoring and control to maintain the efficiency and quality of a continuous manufacturing process. This monitoring system requires expertise in widely disparate areas including process development, analytical characterization of biotherapeutic products, data analytics, process modelling, and artificial intelligence approaches such as machine learning. Rathore has demonstrated in his facility at IIT Delhi how these integrated process platforms can be created, product quality monitored in real-time, and any deviations effectively dealt with to prevent any disruptions in processing. Rathore and his group intend to implement these methods both in their own lab and at biopharmaceutical companies in India and abroad to improve productivity and reduce manufacturing costs. Rathore’s innovations are poised to not only increase access to life-saving therapies but also to position India as a global leader in medical manufacturing technology.