Professor Kamal Bawa, an Indian-origin scientist, elected to Royal Society of London

Prominent Indian-origin scientist Professor Kamal Bawa was in news in the first week of July 2015 as he was elected, along with other two Indian-origin scientists, to the Royal Society of London on 30 April 2015. Other two scientists were- Ajay Sood and John Kuriayn.

The three scientists were elected for life to the society through a peer review process on the basis of excellence in science.

Professor Kamal Bawa: He is an evolutionary ecologist and India's most prominent conservation biologist. His pioneering contributions to understanding the population biology of tropical forest trees led to new strategies for their conservation, and also for the sustainable use of non-timber forest products.

At present he is the Distinguished Professor of Biology, University of Massachusetts-Boston, and Founder President, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore.

Professor Ajay Sood: He is one of the best Indian experimental physicists working in condensed matter. He is most noted for his seminal contributions to soft matter such as discovery of rheochaos, namely of spatio-temporal chaotic dynamics under shear flow and validation of non-equilibrium fluctuation theorem among others.

At present he is a Professor in the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

Professor John Kuriyan: He has made fundamental discoveries concerning the structure and mechanism of the enzymes and molecular switches responsible for cellular signal transduction and DNA replication. Much of our current understanding of how high speed DNA polymerases achieve very high processivity also emanates from Kuriyan's laboratory.

At present, he is a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and of Chemistry, Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the University of California, the USA.

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