Pune: National Chemical Laboratory celebrates 71st Foundation Day

Pune: CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL), Pune celebrated its 71st Foundation Day on Tuesday. On the occasion chief guest, Prof Gagandeep Kang, Professor of Microbiology, Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory, Christian Medical College, Vellore virtually delivered the CSIR-NCL Foundation Day lecture on a topic "COVID-19 and Vaccines: The Road Ahead".

Prof Gagandeep Kang initiated her talk saying that the outbreaks and epidemics can happen anytime but pandemics happen so rarely. She said, “The way that the world is changing today, the number and the diversity of outbreaks have changed over the past 30 years. SARS-CoV-2 is one among the zoonotic diseases such as Zika, AIDS etc. that came to humans from animals. This is happening because we are traveling a lot, we displace the animal populations, remove the forests and promote the animal and human mixing and ultimately change the climate as well.”

NCL Research Foundation Annual Awards were also announced to the deserving scientists and staff of CSIR-NCL.

NCL RF Scientist of the Year Award sponsored by Dr RA Mashelkar Endowment Fund was given to Dr Sakya Sen for his insightful research to mimic the chemistry of transition metals with main group elements for catalytic transformations and Dr Nilesh Mali for his research contributions in developing intensified and energy efficient distillation technologies.

NCL RF- Cipla Hamied Award for the Best Process of the year was given to a group of researchers including Dr Sanjay P Kamble, Dr. Sunil Bhongale, Dr SG Gaikwad, SB Wanjale and R Chandekar for their efforts towards "Process Development for the Production of Paracetamol" which is a cost effective, sustainable and environmental friendly process.