Dr. Vandana Bhalla of GNDU honored with prestigious Bhagyatara Award 2015

Amritsar, May 3 (Punjab Post Bureau)-  Dr. Vandana Bhalla, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Guru Nanak Dev University. Dr. Vandana Bhalla was conferred with the prestigious Bhagyatara Award at Chemistry Auditorium, Panjab University (PU).  Founder Vice Chancellor (VC) of Central University of Punjab and former VC, Guru Nanak Dev University, Prof. Jai Rup Singh honoured Dr. Vandana Bhalla for her outstanding contribution to Chemistry. Emeritus Professor, Department of Chemistry, PU Prof. D. V. S. Jain and Chairperson, Department of Chemistry, PU Prof. P. Venugopalan joined Prof. Singh to felicitate Dr.Bhalla.The award is given every year by PU for research in the area of Organic/Chemistry/Biochemistry/ Pharmaceutical Chemistry/Dairy Chemistry and the selected awardee gets Rs. 50,000/. The Awardee is selected on the basis of the merit of his/her research work evaluated by a panel of Experts from among the Nominations received from different Universities/Research Institutes form all over India. She is the first woman Scientist and Assistant Professor to get this award. Dr. Bhalla delivered the Bhagyatara Award Lecture on the topic of ‘A Journey with Fluorescent Assemblies: Molecular Sensing and Catalysis’ at Chemistry Auditorium, PU. Dr. Bhalla did her PhD from Guru Nanak Dev University and post-doctoral studies from Japan. Presently she is Assistant Professor in Department of Chemistry of Guru Nanak Dev University. She is a scientist with keen interest in supramolecular chemistry and has contributed extensively in the development of new strategies for preparation of luminescent supramolecular materials with applications for carrying out various organic transformations under mild and ecofriendly conditions. Dr. Bhalla has been conferred with several prestigious awards such as Thomson Reuters Research Excellence India Citation Award 2015, Bronze Medal Awarded by Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI), Bangalore for the year 2015. She is also a Council Member of Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI), Bangalore from 2014-2016.She has published more than 145 research articles in International journals with high impact factor. Currently she is also an associate Editor of RSC Advances-a journal of Royal Society of Chemistry,UK. Dr. Vandana Bhalla has also got grants worth more than Rs. 1.5 crore from different funding agencies during the last eight years.