Tata Sons, NYAS Honor Innovations in Food, Energy, Healthcare

Tata Sons and The New York Academy of Sciences today announced the second cohort of Winners of the Tata Transformation Prize.

The Prize recognizes and supports visionary scientists in India who are developing breakthrough technologies that address India’s most significant societal challenges in Food Security, Sustainability, and Healthcare. The goal of the prize is to drive impactful innovation and scale-up implementation of high-reward research.

Three scientists were selected from 169 entries from 18 Indian states by an international jury of leading experts. Each winner will receive INR 2 crores (approximately US$240,000) and will be honoured at a ceremony in Mumbai in December 2024. The jury included distinguished scientists, clinicians, technologists, and engineers from a diverse array of industries, government, and academic institutions, including Apple, IBM Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

The 2024 Tata Transformation Prize Winners are:

·         C. Anandharamakrishnan , PhD, CSIR - National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Trivandrum (Food Security):

Hunger and public health are urgent challenges in India, with nearly 30% of the population lacking essential nutrients and 7% affected by diabetes. There is a pressing need for solutions that address both malnutrition and chronic disease. C. Anandharamakrishnan, PhD, has pioneered a variety of rice fortified with multiple essential nutrients that simultaneously has a low glycaemic index (GI) to control blood sugar levels in diabetics. He has developed advanced food technologies such as a three-fluid nozzle spray drying process to efficiently encapsulate and deliver these nutrients in reconstituted rice. He has also engineered Asia’s first artificial gastrointestinal system, which allows his team to analyse nutrient release during digestion to ensure the rice is optimized for maximum absorption of nutrients. His strategies address the nutrient deficiencies, hunger, and metabolic dysfunction faced by India’s underserved and the 2 billion people globally affected by micronutrient malnutrition.

·         Amartya Mukhopadhyay, PhD, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (Sustainability):

With the urgent global need for sustainable energy solutions, the development of affordable, eco-friendly batteries is critical. In India, where key materials for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, such as lithium and cobalt, are scarce and require foreign sources, sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries offer a promising alternative. Amartya Mukhopadhyay, PhD is working to advance Na-ion battery technologies through recent breakthroughs in materials science. His battery prototype is approximately 30% cheaper than Li-ion batteries, operates in a broader temperature range, and is safer to store by creating air- and water-stable sodium-transition metal oxide cathodes and alloy-based anodes. Prof. Mukhopadhyay’s approach also leverages "aqueous processing" of battery electrodes, which replaces toxic solvents with water to reduce production costs and environmental impact.

·         Raghavan Varadarajan, PhD, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (Healthcare)

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) causes severe respiratory illness in over 30 million people annually, disproportionately affecting infants, young children, and the elderly, with more than 97% of RSV-related deaths occurring in developing countries, including India. Despite the availability of new RSV vaccines, their high cost makes them inaccessible to the populations most at risk. Raghavan Varadarajan, PhD aims to develop a cost-effective RSV vaccine that addresses these challenges. Drawing upon his lab’s extensive expertise in protein structure and vaccine design, Dr. Varadarajan is developing a vaccine that will surmount the challenges that have hindered RSV vaccine development for decades and will provide broad and longer-lasting protection against RSV infection. Furthermore, by employing cutting-edge methods in protein production, Dr. Varadarajan’s team is optimizing the vaccine manufacturing process to significantly reduce costs, potentially lowering the price of each dose by up to 95%. 

N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman of the Board of Tata Sons, said, “We are pleased to announce the Tata Transformation Prize Winners for the second year. By supporting pioneering Indian scientists in scaling up their pathbreaking innovations, Tata Group hopes to improve the lives of the Indian people and develop India into a world-class innovator. This prize is intended to provide these scientists with the international visibility to promote these Indian technologies to the rest of the world.”

Nicholas B. Dirks, President and CEO of The New York Academy of Sciences, said, “Congratulations to the second cohort of Winners of the Tata Transformation Prize. From addressing India’s issues such as malnutrition and diabetes, to an RSV vaccine that reduces mortality in the most vulnerable populations, to improving India’s energy storage capacity through greener, more cost-effective battery technologies – these scientists are using their innovations to bolster Indian society. Many thanks to Tata for sponsoring this visionary prize and our independent jury for volunteering their time and expertise."