India-Born Biologist, Kamal Bawa, has been Elected to the Royal Society

Kamal Bawa, an India-born biologist, has been elected to the prestigious Royal Society in recognition for his incredible work in the field of conservation science. 

Kamal Bawa, a 76-year-old biologist and ecologist from India, who is currently a distinguished Biology professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, recently got elected to the prestigious Royal Society. The Royal Society is a self-governing fellowship established in London, of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine.

It is the oldest scientific academy in continued existence and has over 80 Nobel laureates amongst its former and current fellows. The fellows of Royal Society include eminent names like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Source: wikimedia

Each year, the fellowship elects about 52 fellows from England and Commonwealth nations and 10 from foreign countries, out of 700 likely candidates. Mr. Bawa will be officially inducted into the Fellowship on July 10. He has been working for University of Massachusetts for about 36 years now.

“I am interested in developing new paradigms of conversation that take into account the need to alleviate poverty in biodiversity-rich areas through sustainable use of biodiversity. I also remain interested in the sustainable use of ecosystem services including such provisioning services as non-timber forest products. My third distinct interest in sustainable studies is land use and land cover change and its impact on biodiversity,” said Mr. Bawa in a university release.

Mr. Bawa’s contributions led to a more developed and sophisticated understanding of tropical forest trees which in turn helped in coming up with new strategies for their conservation and more sustainable use of non-timber forest products.

He is also a prominent leader in conservation science in India and has established ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment) in Bangalore – a very influential NGO that works for the field of biodiversity. He completed his education, including his Ph.D, in India from Punjab University. He also won the Gunnerus Sustainability Award in 2012, as well as the MIDORI Prize in Biodiversity, in 2014.

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