Hyderabad : Ravi Maruthachalam, was selected as one of the top 10 international young faculty members to be recognized with a DuPont 2014 Young Professor (DYP) award. He formally received this recognition from Dr. Ranjan Patnaik, Director, DuPont Knowledge Center (DKC), Hyderabad, on the occasion of the Science Day celebration at DKC.

The DuPont Young Professor program is designed to help promising young and untenured research faculty memebers working in areas of interest to DuPont.  One of the most sustained programs for academic research, the DYP program has spanned four decades, providing over $50 million in grants to nearly 700 young professors in nearly 140 institutions in 14 countries since 1968.  In addition to providing unrestricted funding to new faculty, this prestigious program enables DuPont to build future research partnerships with emerging global academic leaders.

“Young professors award is one of the key DuPont initiatives to encourage academic research that help develop innovations to address the global challenges of food, energy and protection. ” said Dr. Ranjan Patnaik, Director, DuPont Knowledge Centre. “We are delighted to recognize talent in India who have the potential to make path-breaking research contributions.” Dr. Patnaik added. During the three-year grant award period, each grant recipient is invited to present a seminar on his or her work to the DuPont research community.

“Ravi is an exceptionally talented young scientist with potential to develop into a world leader in the field of plant genetics. His recognition as DuPont Young Professor is a proud moment to all of us.” said  Prof. Ramakrishnan, Director, IISER Thiruvananthapuram.

“I am very excited and honored to be one among the recipients of this prestegious award” said Ravi Maruthachalam. Professor Maruthachalam’s  interests are in the area of agricultural biotechnology, plant biology and reproduction. His group is working on cutting edge technologies to expedite plant breeding. This technology has the potential to dramatically reduce the breeding time and resources required for hybrid seed production.

Ravi Maruthachalam received PhD from Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) Hyderabad and was a postdoc at Department of Plant Biology, University of California, Davis.  He is also a recipient of  UC Davis Award of Excellence in Post doctoral research, an early career award from American Society of Plant Biology (ASPB) and currently a Ramalingaswami fellow ( awarded by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India) and Assistant Professor at School of Biology, IISER-Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India.

DuPont has been bringing world-class science and engineering to the global marketplace in the form of innovative products, materials, and services since 1802.  The company believes that by collaborating with customers, governments, NGOs, and thought leaders we can help find solutions to such global challenges as providing enough healthy food for people everywhere, decreasing dependence on fossil fuels, and protecting life and the environment.