City scientist gets Infosys prize for malaria research

It was an early morning call from Bangalore that brought his life’s biggest surprise to Delhi scientist Dr Chetan E. Chitnis on Monday - a Rs 50 lakh prize for his work on one of the world’s first malaria vaccines.

It was a double surprise because the caller was Infosys co- founder N. R. Narayana Murthy himself. He informed Chitnis that he had won the Infosys Prize in the life sciences category for 2010.

Another Infosys co- founder K. Dinesh and chairman of the life sciences jury Prof Inder Verma of Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA, also spoke to Chitnis.

“ It was surprising and satisfying,” said Chitnis, who leads the malaria group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology ( ICGEB), New Delhi. Chitnis, however, did not go to town with the news. “ I just went to drop my daughter - then I spent the whole day in a board meeting.” The prize came as a recognition for his two decades’ effort to develop a malaria vaccine. The soft- spoken scientist has been credited for the identification of a protein on the malarial parasite that binds to another protein on the human blood cell. Clinical trials are expected soon for a vaccine against vivax malaria that infects 100 million people worldwide.

Trials are already on for a similar vaccine against deadly falciparum malaria, Chitnis said. “ However, do not expect a vaccine to come out in the market tomorrow — it is a long process,” he added. The Infosys Science Foundation on Monday announced the six winners who will get Rs 50 - lakh prize each.

Social sciences winners Prof Amita Baviskar of the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), and Prof Nandini Sundar of Delhi School of Economics are the Capital’s other laureates.

The math prize went to Prof Chandrashekhar Khare at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), physical sciences to Sandip Trivedi at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, and engineering and computer sciences to Prof Ashutosh Sharma at IIT, Kanpur.

Interestingly, all the Delhi winners have taken a western route to grapple with Indian problems. Chitnis did his masters at Rice University, Houston, PhD at University of California, Berkeley, and then visiting fellowship at the US National Institutes of Health. Baviskar’s PhD is from Cornell. Sundar graduated from Oxford before moving to Columbia University for her masters and PhD.