Dr Raghunath Mashelkar (India) and Professor Rüdiger Wehner (Switzerland) have been admitted to the Australian Academy of Science for outstanding scientific contributions to their fields.
Dr Mashelkar, currently President of the Global Research Alliance (GRA) is a highly successful polymer chemist. He has played a critical role in shaping the direction of India’s science and technology policies.
Dr Mashelkar’s leadership of India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research over 11 years saw it increase its research income from international corporations to more than US$1billion. The transformation has been hailed as of the ten most significant achievements of Indian science and technology.
Dr Mashelkar has also promoted worldwide the idea of ‘Ghandian engineering’, an Indian approach to inclusive innovation based on `doing more for less, for more people’.
Dr Mashelkar’s connections with Australian science have seen him create India-Australia education, research and innovation partnerships through Monash University, Swinburne, RMIT and the Australia-India Institute.
Professor Wehner, from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has been recognised for his world-leading research on animal navigation (neuroethology).
Professor Wehner has spent over 40 years studying how insects, despite their tiny brains, are capable of sophisticated visually guided behaviours. His research has focused on the inbuilt navigation systems of various species of the Saharan desert ant (Cataglyphis).
Professor Wehner was the first to show how the ant uses patterns of polarised light as a celestial compass, allowing it to pull off extraordinary feats of navigation through arid, featureless desert landscapes.
He also demonstrated that the ants' nervous system, or neural pathways, work in a similar way to those in other ‘higher animals’ such as mammals and primates.
The research has been used as a model for other studies of insect navigation and increased scientists’ understanding of the evolution of nervous systems and their role in controlling behaviour.
Professor Wehner’s lifelong interest in insect navigation has also seen him team up with Macquarie University’s Dr Ken Cheng, to study the navigation patterns of the red honey ant (melophorus bagoti), which lives in the deserts of central Australia.
Australian Academy of Science President, Professor Andrew Holmes, congratulated the new Corresponding Members.
“Professors Wehner and Dr Mashelkar join the Academy as Corresponding Members, a special category within the Fellowship, comprising eminent international scientists with strong ties to Australia who have made outstanding contributions to science,” said Professor Holmes.
The Australian Academy of Science will announce the election of 21 distinguished Australian scientists as New Fellows, to mark the start of Science at the Shine Dome, on 22 May 2017.
Media contact: Dan Wheelahan. dan.wheelahan@science.org.au ph: 0435 930 465
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