Thiruvananthapuram youth conferred with Young Scientist Award

Shabuddin Shaik, a research scholar at Indian Taxonomist, Prof Y Ranga Reddy, department of Zoology and Aquaculture of Acharya Nagarjuna University, was conferred with Young Scientist Award for his outstanding achievement in the field of Biological Science for his paper on ‘Enigmatic Indian Cave Biodiversity’.

The award was conferred to him by Director of National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, A Ajaya Ghosh, at the 16th annual Science Awards at B M Birla Science Centre on June 11. Shabuddin Shaik received a cash reward of Rs 10,000 along with the Youth Scientist certificate.

Speaking about the achievement, Shabuddin shared that he has been working under a DST funded research project on a group of microcrustaceans called copepods, bathynellaceans and isopods for the past 4 years for doctorate. “It is very rare that one takes interest to explore the biodiversity of microcrustaceans from caves, and I am the only one and first ever person from India.

I feel very proud of my achievement which gave me an opportunity to discover 30 new species, two new genera in my four years of time. Among them, 16 species including 2 new genera have been formally described under 8 publications in international peer review Journals such as Zootaxa, Journal of Crustacean Biology and Journal of Natural History,” he added.

Not just that but the determined youth, Shabuddin is honored by overseas scientific peers who named a new species after him. It is called, ‘Andhracoides Shabuddin’. Shabuddin is also a member of International reputed Scientific Societies namely International Conservation Society of Indonesia, World Environmental Organisation of the USA, World Association of Young Scientists, UNESCO, Paris, Group of Earth Observation Biodiversity Observation Network, Germany and Ocean Futures Society of the USA.