Young Scientist award for Assistant Professor, PU

Chandigarh, February 22, 2019: Dr.Santosh Kumar Upadhyay, Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh has been awarded “Young Scientist Award” of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), India, for his strong research contribution in the area of Plant Improvement for the Biennium 2017-2018. The felicitation of this Young Scientist Award is performed during XIV Agricultural Science Congress 2019, NASC Complex, Pusa, NewDelhi. And it was felicitated by Shri Radha Mohan Singh, Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India. Further, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat was also present during the felicitation of the award to Dr. Upadhyay. Dr. Upadhyay has been working in the field of Plant Biotechnology for more than 12 years. His present research focuses in the area of functional genomics. He is involved in the characterization of various insect toxic proteins from plant biodiversity, and defense and stress signaling genes in bread wheat. He has played significant role in identification of whitefly toxic proteins from lower plants and involved in the development of whitefly resistant cotton plants. His research group at PU has characterized numerous important gene families related to the abiotic and biotic stress tolerance and signaling in bread wheat. His research work has been published as more than 45 research papers in leading international journals with high impact factors. Further, there are more than five national and international patents and six book chapters in his credit. In recognition of his strong research record he has been earlier awarded NAAS-Associate (2018), INSA Medal for Young Scientist (2013), NASI- Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award (2012) and Altech Young Scientist Award (2011). He has also been the recipient of a most prestigious DST-INSPIRE Faculty Fellowship (2012) and Early Career Research Award (2016) from Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.