Three Indian-origin scientists win prestigious American Physical Society prizes

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The American Physical Society announced winners of the Spring 2022 APS Prizes and Awards Oct. 15, 2021. Among them are three scientists of Indian origin, two from New York City and one from Ohio.

The APS Prizes and Awards recognize outstanding achievements in research, education, and public service. With few exceptions, they are open to all members of the scientific community in the U.S .and abroad. The nomination and selection procedure, involving APS-appointed selection committees, guarantees high standards and prestige, the organization said in a press release.

Those of Indian origin to win awards are:

2022 Leo P. Kadanoff Prize

Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, New York University
For pioneering experimental, theoretical, and numerical research on the nonlinear and multifractal foundations of turbulent flows.

Sreenivasan is the Eugene Kleiner Professor for Innovation in Mechanical Engineering at the New York University (NYU), Professor in the Physics Department and at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He was previously the president of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, the inaugural Dean of Engineering, the executive vice provost in charge of science and technology.

Previously, he served as the director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy (2003-2009), during which time he maintained his position as Distinguished University Professor and Glenn L. Martin Professor of Engineering and Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, where he also served as the Director of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (2002-2003).

At Yale (1979-2001), he held appointments in Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics and Mathematics, in addition to various leadership positions.

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Science, Sreenivasan’s primary expertise is fluid mechanics and turbulence, well-known contributions to the scaling problems, mixing, convection, quantum turbulence, etc.

He has won numerous other honors

2022 Polymer Physics Prize

Sanat K Kumar, Columbia University
For fundamental experimental, simulatory, and theoretical contributions to understanding structure, assembly, and dynamics in polymer nanocomposites and thin films.

Sanat Kumar is Bykhovsky Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University. He has a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY. He earned his Chemical Engineering BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (’81) followed by SM (’84) and ScD (’87) degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. Subsequently, he spent one year as a post-doctoral fellow at IBMs Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA (’87-’88).

His current research focuses on hybrid inorganic-organic composite materials, ranging from enunciating their fundamentals to their application is a variety of critical sustainability contexts (gas/water separations).

More recent interests are in polymer upcycling. In all cases a combination of theory, experiment and simulations are employed in the solution of these problems.

He is the author of 300 publications, 3 patents and an edited book, is a fellow of the American Physical Society and is the Chevron visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, among several other positions with various institutions.

2022 Hans A. Bethe Prize

Madappa Prakash, Ohio University
For fundamental contributions to the physics of hot and dense matter, and their implications for heavy ion collisions and multi-messenger observations of neutron star structure and evolution.

Madappa Prakash earned his Ph. D. degree in physics from the University of Bombay (1979), while he was employed at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center there. His post-doctoral studies were conducted at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen (1979-81) and Stony Brook University (1982-86), where he taught and engaged in research until 2005. Prakash joined Ohio University in 2005 as a full professor.

Prakash has a broad range of interests. Beginning with the nuclear fission process in his Ph.D. thesis, his research has covered many of the myriad phenomena that occur in nuclei and in nuclear matter under extreme conditions of density, temperature, and magnetic fields. His work has illuminated the role of the equation of state of dense matter in nuclear collisions from low to very high energies and the structure of neutron stars.

He develops equations of state, neutrino opacities, and transport characteristics in dense matter for studies of supernovae and binary mergers involving neutron stars and black holes.

In 2001, Prakash was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (Division of Nuclear Physics) “For fundamental research into the properties of hot and dense matter, providing a basis for understanding relativistic heavy ion collisions and the structure and composition of neutron stars”.