AWARDS OCTOBER 2017

AWARDS OCTOBER 2017

• Salim Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim: A globally-acclaimed South African Indian-origin researcher couple was honored on 25th October with a prestigious US award for their exceptional contributions in the field of HIV/AIDS. Professors Salim Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim received the award from the Institute for Human Virology (IHV) in Baltimore in the US. The award was presented to them by Robert Gallo, who discovered HIV as the cause of AIDS‚ at the 19th international meeting of the IHV.
  
  Salim Abdool Karim is the Director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim is its associate scientific Director.
  
• Indian Peacekeepers awarded UN Medal for their professionalism
  Fifty Indian peacekeepers stationed in South Sudan have been awarded the UN Medal for their professionalism and service in protecting civilians and building durable peace in the conflict-ridden country. UN Mission in South Sudan, UNMISS, Force Commander General Frank Mushyo Kamanzi awarded the UN Medal to the officers serving with the Indian Battalion, located in Bor in the Jonglei region of South Sudan.
  
• George Saunders:
  US author George Saunders has won the 2017 Man Booker Prize. He became only the second American writer to win Britain's renowned Prize, which was awarded for his first full-length novel "Lincoln in the Bardo". The prize was announced at a ceremony in London.
  
  Judges for the prestigious English-language literary award praised the book as utterly original that chronicles the death of Abraham Lincoln's 11-year-old son Willie using the accounts of hundreds of narrators.This year's Man Booker Prize shortlist pitted three US and three British writers against one another.
  
• Rajiv Gandhi International Air port
  Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) has bagged the World 1 airport Award trophy of the Airports Council International (ACI) in the 5-15 million passengers per annum category.
  
  The Airport is run by the GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd. (GHIAL), received the trophy from Angela Gittens, Director General of the ACI and Bongani Maseko, CEO, Airports Company South Africa during the 27th ACI Africa World Annual General Assembly, Conference and Exhibition in Port Louis, Mauritius on 17th October.
  
• Schellnhuber: Environmental scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber received Blue Planet Prize, world’s most prestigious award for pioneers in environmental science. He is the second recipient of the Blue Planet Prize. She has been awarded for her research about biodiversity and natural capital. Blue Planet Prize was instituted by Asahi Glass Foundation (an affiliate of Asahi Glass manufacturing company of Japan) in 1992.
  
• Nobel Economics Prize 2017 has been awarded to Richard Thaler
   Richard Thaler: The Nobel economics prize has been awarded to Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago for his contributions to behavioural economics.
  
  Swedish Academy of Sciences Secretary Goeran Hansson said today that the 9-million-kronor (1.1 million US Dollars) prize was awarded to the academic for his understanding the psychology of economics.
  
  The Nobel committee said Thaler's work shows how human traits affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.
  
  Thaler,is a pioneer in behavioural economics, a research field in which insights from psychological research are applied to economic decision making, a background paper from the academy said.
  
• Rajesh Nath:
  Rajesh Nath, Managing Director of The German Engineering Federation (VDMA) India conferred as the ‘Cross of the Order of Merit’, the highest civilian honor awarded to individuals for their services to Germany. The award, also known as Bundesverdienstkreuz or Federal Cross of Merit was instituted in 1951 and is Germany’s only honor that is awarded to both Germans and foreigners for achievements in the economic, social, political or intellectual realms.
  
• Bindeshwar Pathak:
  President Ram Nath Kovind presented Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academics and Management to noted social reformer and founder of Sulabh International Bindeshwar Pathak for his immense contribution towards getting rid of manual scavenging.
  
  The President presented this year's award to Mr. Pathak at Rashtrapati Bhavan. President said Bindeshwar Pathak had contributed to making revolutionary changes in society and has put into practice the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, Ambedkar and Shastri.
  
  Mr. Pathak was conferred with the Padma Bhushan in 1991. Pathak has developed and implemented a low cost and appropriate toilet technology popularly known as the Sulabh Shauchalaya system.
  
• Birendra Sasmal:
   A Ghana-based Indian entrepreneur, Birendra Sasmal has won a prestigious business award in the UK for his efforts to bring innovative IT solutions to Africa.
  
  Birendra Sasmal, CEO of Subah, bagged the International Business Person of the Year at the Asian Achievers Awards in London for turning the company into a thriving IT, telecoms and manufacturing success story with operations across West Africa.
  
  Headquartered in Accra, Ghana, the Subah Group employs around 350 people with offices in Guinea, Sierra Leone, New York City and Dubai. Under Sasmal's leadership, the group's revenues have increased by over 3,000 per cent and it has been named among one of Africa's fastest growing tech companies.
  
• US geneticists Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young wins Nobel Medicine Prize
  This year's Nobel Medicine Prize went to US geneticists Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young for their discoveries on how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth's revolutions.
  
  For many years, scientists have known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal clock that helps them adapt to the rotation of earth.
  
  The clock influences such biological functions as hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism. It is what causes jetlag -- when the internal clock and external environment move out of sync when Humans change time zones.
  
  Using the fruit fly as a model organism, the scientists isolated a gene that controls the daily biological rhythm. The trio will share the prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about 1.1 million US Dollars.)
  
• Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson win Nobel Prize for Chemistry
  Scientists Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson have won the Nobel Chemistry Prize on 4th October for the development of cryo-electron microscopy. It’s a method of simplifying and improving the imaging of biomolecules.
  
  Commenting on the discovery by the winners Nobel committee said in a statement that the researchers can now routinely produce three-dimensional structures of biomolecules.
  
• Kazuo Ishiguro:
  British author Kazuo Ishiguro has been declared as the winner of Nobel Literature prize. The novelist was praised by the Swedish Academy as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath illusory sense of connection with the world".
  
  He has written eight books, which have been translated into over 40 languages. His most famous novels "The Remains of the Day" and "Never Let Me Go" were adapted into highly acclaimed films. He was made an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1995.
  
• International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons awarded 2017 Nobel Peace Prize
  The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Nobel Peace Prize on 6th October. The Nobel Peace Prize, worth nine million Swedish crowns ($1.10 million), will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10.