June 2020 Awards

• Indian-American soil scientist wins 2020 World Food Prize
  Indian-American soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal has won the prestigious 2020 World Food Prize, which is considered to be equivalent to a Nobel Prize in the field of agriculture. The award recognized his contribution to increasing the global food supply by helping small farmers improve the health of the soil. The award also highlights the importance of managing & restoring soil health.
  
  Dr. RattanLal:
  Dr. RattanLal was awarded for his role in developing and mainstreaming a soil-centric approach to increase food production that restores and conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change.
  
  Dr. Rattan Lal has a career spanning more than five decades. He has promoted innovative soil-saving techniques benefiting the livelihoods of more than 500 million small farmers.
  
  His inventions were aimed to improve the food and nutritional security of more than two billion people and saving hundreds of millions of hectares of natural tropical ecosystems. Lal is a Distinguished Professor in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) at The Ohio State University.
  
  World Food Prize:
  World Food Prize was first awarded in 1987. The award is presented by the World Food Prize Foundation, with various sponsor companies. The award recognizes contributions that are made in the various field involved in the world food supply including Animal Science/Aqua Culture, Food Technology/Food Safety, Nutrition/Health, Plant Science/Seed Science, Plant Pathology/Crop Protection, Soil Science/Water/Conservation, Policy/Research/Extension, Infrastructure/Emergency Relief, and Poverty and Hunger Alleviation.
  
  The first awardee of the award is an Indian agricultural scientist Dr. M S Swaminathan, who is the father of the Green Revolution in India.
  
  
• Kiran Mazumdar Shaw awarded EY World Entrepreneur of the year
  Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Founder and Chairperson & Managing Director of Biocon, has been named EY World Entrepreneur for the year 2020. The award is to recognize her contribution to improving universal access to affordable life-saving medicine and thus transforming the world.
  
  She became only the third Indian to receive this prestigious award after UdayKotak and Narayana Murthy. Shaw became only the second woman to receive this award. Olivia Lum of Hyflux Limited from Singapore is the first person to have won the title in 2011.
  
  Kiran Mazumdar Shaw:
  Shaw founded Bangalore-based Biocon Limited in 1978. Biocon currently worth close to Rs.50,000 crore by market-cap and employs more than 11,000 people. The bio-enzyme company focus on global health care and the provision of universal access to life-saving medicine.
  
  In September 2019, Biocon announced that the company would supply Rh-insulin at less than $0.10 per day to low and middle-income countries. The price is less than a third of current RH-insulin prices.
  
  Biocon supplied more than 2 billion affordable doses of biosimilarinsulins to patients globally in the last 15 years.
  
  Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Biocon is studying the use of its existing novel biologic drug Itolizumab to treat COVID-19 related health conditions in India.

Published date : 18 Jun 2020 12:19PM