Lucknow :

Smita Kumar of Lucknow University faculty from department of biochemistry has been conferred the prestigious Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award by the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) for her contribution in the field of plant sciences and agriculture.

Smita is among the four teachers to have received this award in her field. The three others, one each from IIT-Roorkee; Ghent University, Belgium and International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru in Telangana.

“It’s a privilege to have won the award,” said Smita.

Smita completed her MSc from department of biochemistry, LU in 2007 and PhD from Banaras Hindu University in 2013 while working in National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI), Lucknow. “I worked on molecular aspects of heavy metal stress in plants with special reference to arsenic which is a big public health menace in Indo-Gangetic plain and causes various skin diseases and cancer,” said Smita.

After completing her PhD, Smita was awarded prestigious DST-INSPIRE Faculty Award, after which she joined LU in June 2014 to pursue her future research on heavy metal stress in Arabidopsis (a small genus of annual or biennial herbs of north temperate regions) natural variations.

Smita was awarded the NASI Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award in the 85th meeting of NASI held recently at Bhubaneshwar.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Lucknow / by Isha Jain, TNN / January 19th, 2016