Indian American professor Dr. Rakesh K. Jain has been selected for 2015 National Medal of Science of the United States. He will be presented this top award along with 16 other winners by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony in January 2016. All of them were chosen for this award for their individual achievement and leadership in advancing the fields of science and technology.

• Rakesh K. Jain is currently working as professor at Harvard Medical School and also is the director of tumour biology laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.
• Jain has received numerous awards for his work on tumor biology, particularly research on the link between tumor blood vessels and improving the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
• He received his B.Tech degree from the IIT-Kanpur in Chemical Engineering in 1972.

About the Award

• The National Medal of Science was created by statute in 1959 and is administered for the White House by the National Science Foundation.
• Awarded annually, the Medal recognises individuals who have made outstanding contributions to science and engineering.

Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its nod to establish 3 new All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

These 3 AIIMS will be established at Nagpur (Maharashtra), Manglagiri (Andhra Pradesh) and Kalyani in West Bengal.

They will be established under Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana with the cost nearly 5,000 crore rupees.

 

Other decisions taken by Union Cabinet

Three scientists Youyou Tu (China), Satoshi Omura (Japan) and William Campbell (Ireland) have won 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

They have been chosen for their pioneering discoveries which have led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases such as malaria and elephantiasis.

The laureates will receive their prizes on December 10, 2015 at a formal ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden marking the anniversary of the death of prize creator Alfred Nobel.

William Campbell and Satoshi Omura: Both biochemists have won half of the Nobel Prize of this edition for discovering avermectin, a derivative which is used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis).