3NRI Scientist win UK's prestigious
Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists

Los Angeles, Jan 24, 2024
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh

Three NRI are among the nine recipients of this year's Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK for their pioneering work in the fields of chemical, physical, and life sciences. Professors Rahul R. Nair, Mehul Malik, Dr Tanmay Bharat, will be honoured and receive grants totaling 480,000 pounds at a black-tie gala dinner and award ceremony in London,

Leonard Blavatnik, Founder and Chairman of Access Industries and Head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation Said

• Providing recognition and funding early in a scientist’s career can make the difference between discoveries that remain in the lab and those that make transformative scientific breakthroughs
• We are proud that the Awards have promoted both UK science and the careers of many brilliant young scientists and we look forward to their additional discoveries in the years ahead

The 2024 Awards received 84 nominations from 40 academic and research institutions and this year’s laureates were selected by an independent jury of expert scientists across the UK.

Now in its seventh year, the awards -- instituted by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences -- have donated 3.3 million pounds to scientists across UK academia since their inception.

Professor Rahul R. Nair is a materials physicist at The University of Manchester, was named Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering for developing novel membranes based on two-dimensional (2D) materials that will enable energy-efficient separation and filtration technologies.
Using graphene and other 2D materials, his research aims to study the transport of water, organic molecules, and ions at the nanoscale, exploring its potential applications to address societal challenges, including water filtration and other separation technologies.
He will receive 100,000 pounds in unrestricted funds for his research that has provided valuable insights "into the movement of water and other molecules in nano-capillaries, as those movements differ from their behaviour on the macro scale

About Rahul Nair

• Dr. Rahul R. Nair is a Professor of Materials Physics at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) and School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science at the University of Manchester and holds a prestigious Royal Society Fellowship and ERC grant.
• The main scope of his research is the novel synthesis and construction of application-oriented devices based on two-dimensional (2D) crystals to explore new physical phenomena.
•  His group is actively engaged in the design and development of 2D materials based membranes and nanofluidic devices for probing fundamental molecular transport at the nanoscale and their potential applications in our daily life. 
• He has published over 50 highly cited peer‐refereed research articles, including five Science, three Nature, and more than a dozen Nature series publications during the last ten years.
• His awards include a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, IUPAP Young Scientist Award (2014) from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the Moseley Medal and Prize (2015) from the Institute of Physics, Lee Hsun Lecture Award on Materials Science (2018), Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Creativity prize (2018) from the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW). He has also selected as a Highly Cited Researcher in 2016 and 2017 by Thomson Reuters.

Professor Mehul Malik is a Quantum physicist and Professor of Physics, Professor Mehul Malik, is advancing quantum communications at Heriot-Watt University through revolutionary techniques that harness high-dimensional entanglement -- a complex quantum physics phenomenon.
His innovations enable the normally fragile entanglement to survive long distances and harsh conditions, laying the foundation for noise-robust and high-capacity quantum networks that securely transmit large amounts of information encoded on individual photons.

He will receive 30,000 pounds for their research

About Mehul Malik

• He is  an experimental physicist working in the field of quantum optics and quantum information.
• He use light as a means of understanding the universe that we can perceive, as well as the universe that we cannot.
• His research interests include quantum entanglement, quantum imaging, quantum information, and high-dimensional quantum states of light.
• His research group is currently funded by an ERC Starting Grant, the UK EPSRC via an Early Career Fellowship, and the Austrian FWF (QuantERA ERA-NET co-fund).

Professional Experience

• June 2020 –
  Institute of Photonic and Quantum Sciences (IPaQS), Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
  Associate Professor of Physics, EPSRC Early Career Fellow Group Leader, BBQ Lab
  
• June 2018 – May 2020
  Institute of Photonic and Quantum Sciences (IPaQS), Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
  Assistant Professor of Physics, EPSRC Early Career Fellow Group Leader, BBQ Lab
• Dec 2016 – May 2018
  Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Vienna
  Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Huber Research Group
  
• Jul 2015 – Nov 2016
  University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics
  Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Zeilinger Research Group
  
• Jul 2013 – Jun 2015
  University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics
  Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow, Zeilinger Research Group
  
• Mar 2013 – Jun 2013
  University of Rochester, The Institute of Optics
  Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Boyd Research Group
  
• Sep 2006 – Feb 2013
  University of Rochester, The Institute of Optics
  Graduate Research Assistant, Boyd Research Group

Education

• Ph.D. in Optics, Mar 2013, University of Rochester, The Institute of Optics
  Thesis: “Secure Quantum Technologies” Advisor: Prof. Robert W. Boyd M.S. in Optics, Oct 2009 University of Rochester, The Institute of Optics B.A. in Physics with Honors, May 2006 Minor in Art and Art History
  Colgate University, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Dr Tanmay Bharat is a structural microbiologist and programme leader in the Structural Studies Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, has developed and applied cutting-edge cryo-ET techniques to create atomic-level pictures of cell surface molecules on microorganisms.

According to the award committee, his work has important biomedical implications, since most pathogenic bacteria infect humans by forming multicellular, antibiotic-resistant, biofilm communities. In addition, his work is also vital for the fundamental understanding of the dynamics of cell-to-cell interactions that led to the historical evolution of multicellular life on earth.

He will receive 30,000 pounds for their research

About Tanmay Bharat

Tanmay A. M. Bharat is a programme leader in the Structural Studies Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He and his group use electron tomography, together with several structural and cell biology methods to study the cell surfaces of bacteria and archaea.

His work has increased the understanding of how surface molecules help in the formation of multicellular communities of prokaryotes, examples of which include biofilms and microbiomes. He has been awarded several prizes and fellowships for his work.

Education

• Bharat graduated with a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford, UK. His studies were supported by a Rhodes Scholarship.
• He then undertook research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany for his PhD working with John A. G. Briggs.
• He studied the structure and assembly of pathogenic viruses using cryogenic electron microscopy and tomography.
• His work on several viral capsid proteins improved understanding of how viruses are assembled within infected cells

Research

• He subsequently joined the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge to pursue post-doctoral research with Jan Löwe using cryo-EM to study proteins within bacterial cells.
• After his post-doctoral appointment concluded, he was recruited to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford as a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow.
• After obtaining tenure at Oxford, he moved back to the LMB as a programme leader in 2022.
• His research investigates how bacteria and archaea use their surface molecules to form multicellular communities. For instance, during human infections bacteria form biofilms that help them evade antibiotics.
• The group also use electron tomography.

Awards

• Bharat has been awarded many prizes and fellowships.These include a 2018 Vallee Research Scholarship, the 2019 EMBL John Kendrew Award the 2020 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Biological Sciences, the 2021 Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators, and the 2021 Lister Prize, the 2022 Colworth Medal from the Biochemical Society and the 2023 Fleming Prize from the Microbiology Society.