Awardee of the Year 2017

The first “Shiv Nath Rai Kohli memorial mid-career Best Scientist award, 2017” awarded to:

(1) Dr Vandana Bhalla, Assistant Professor (4 Grade pay 8000/-), Department of Chemistry, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar for her contribution in the field of Chemical Sciences.

Significant contributions of the Awardee of the year 2017:

The research activities of my group are related to design and synthesis of supramolecular materials and assemblies for applications related to molecular sensing, recognition and catalysis.

From our laboratory, we have reported a variety of fluorescent probes for recognition of toxic/ biologically important metal ions, anions and for selective sensing of hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorite and hydrogen sulfide. The applications of these probes were tested for in vitro detection of various analytes. The outcome of this part of work is of great help for development of new materials for drug delivery system.

One part of our work involves preparation of new materials for detection of explosives in aqueous phase and vapor phase. Recently, her research group has reported supramolecular assemblies of fluorescent materials which showed sensitive response towards picric acid (PA) and trinitrotoluene (TNT). They have also prepared dipstrips by coating Whatman paper/silica coated strips with these materials which could detect PA and TNT at attogram level, thus, providing a simple, low cost and portable method for sensitive detection of explosives. One of her research area focuses on preparation of metal nanoparticles. These insitu generated nanoparticles have been utilized as recyclable catalyst to carry out various organic transformations under eco-friendly conditions.

Research output score as on February 09 2018.

h-index SCOPUS 38

Citations SCOPUS 4455

No of Paper on SCOPUS 152

h-index Web of Science 37

Citations WoS 4188

No of Paper on WoS 137

“The first “Shiv Nath Rai Kohli memorial mid-career Best Scientist award, 2017” awarded to:

(2) Dr. Sanyog Jain, Associate Professor, Centre for Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, Dept. of Pharmaceutics, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Sector 67, SAS Nagar, Mohali, in recognition of his research contribution in the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Significant contributions:

Dr Sanyog jain is highly productive scientist having contributed to the area Nanotechnology and Advanced Drug Delivery (Nanomedicine) and actively engaged in development of tailor made nanoformulations based on biodegradable polumers, lipids and carbon nanotubes for effective delivery of challenging drug and macromolecules like proteins (insulin), vaccines and DNA. He has developed several patentable nanotechnology based formulations for treatment of life threatening diseases and successfully licensed Tamoxifen-SNEDDS technology for improved breast cancer therapy to the industry for further development and commercialization.

He has successfully exploited these technologies for targeted anticancer drug delivery: oral vaccine delivery; oral insulin delivery; enhanced oral bioavailability of anticancer drugs, antifungal drugs, antiviral drugs and antioxidants; topical and transdermal drug delivery through skin for treatment of psoriasis, acne and wrinkles, non-viral vectors for site specific gene delivery and various other biomedical applications. He has also demonstrated cell based permeability assays, mechanism of intracellular uptake intracellular internalization, cell cytotoxicity and intracellular trafficking of his developed nanoparticle based formulations.

Research output score as on February 09 2018.

h-index SCOPUS 33

Citations SCOPUS 3558

No of Paper on SCOPUS 136

h-index Web of Science 25

Citations WoS 2207

No of Paper on WoS 113