Two UoH Professors elected NAS Fellows

​Hyderabad: Prof. Samar K Das from the School of Chemistry and Prof. Karumuri Ashok of the Centre for Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Hyderabad have been elected as Fellows of the National Academy of Sciences(NAS), Allahabad for the year 2018 based on their contributions to Chemistry and the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences respectively. Prof. Samar Das has done his PhD from IIT-Kanpur and postdoctoral research from Ohio State University (USA) and University of Bielefeld (Germany). His research interests are in Functional Inorganic Materials.

Prof. Ashok has done his MSc, MTech and PhD from Andhra University. He worked in the capacities of a postdoctoral researcher, and later as a researcher, at the Frontier Research Center for Global Change (FRCGC‐ JAMSTEC), Japan. He also worked as a senior scientist at the APEC Climate Center Korea. He was the lead scientist of the group that developed India’s first earth system model at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

His most important scientific contribution is the discovery of El Niño Modoki, a distinct type of El Niño with climatic impacts different from the canonical El Niños. His current interests include the theoretical aspects of monsoon instabilities, extreme event predictions, and utilization of the monsoon predictions for applications to fields such as agriculture.

The National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, is the oldest of the three Science Academies of India. It was visualised by Prof. Meghnad Saha at the Allahabad University in 1929 and was founded in the year 1930 with the objective of providing a national forum for the publication of research work carried out by Indian scientists and to provide them opportunities for exchange of ideas/concepts among themselves. The Academy has presently 1755 Members and 1777 Fellows from all parts of the country; including 16 Honorary Fellows and 97 Foreign Fellows from various disciplines of Science and Technology.