Dr. R.A.Mashelkar Joins Judging Panel for Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

Eminent chemical engineer and former Director General, CSIR, Dr. Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, has joined the judging panel for the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (QE Prize).

The biennial £1-mn (US$1.42-mn) QE Prize, now entering its fourth cycle, was first awarded in 2013 to celebrate the very best in international engineering and has been likened to the missing ‘Nobel Prize for Engineering’. Public nominations are for the 2019 cycle opened on 26 March 2018 and will close on 18 May 2018. The winners will be announced in February next year.

Dr. Mashelkar was joined by another chemical engineer, Dr. Jinghai Li – bringing the total tally of chemical engineers on the 15-person judging panel to four.

Dr. Mashelkar earned his Ph.D at the University of Bombay’s Department of Chemical Technology (now UICT) and was a member of India’s Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister for over three de-cades. He served as the President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) in 2007/08. Dr. Li obtained a Ph.D from the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Process Engineering and went on to establish the energy-minimisation multi-scale (EEMS) model for gas-solid systems.

Previous winners of the QE Prize include MIT chemical engineer Robert Langer for his work on controlled release drugs, which have transformed the lives of billions of people; and the five engineers whose work helped create the internet and the worldwide web.