Current Affairs - Awards In News

• Nobel laureate Amartya Kumar Sen, an Indian economist and philosopher who studied the causes of famines, will be recognised with this year’s Princess of Asturias award in the social sciences category.
• The award is one of eight prizes, including in the arts, communications and sports, handed out annually by the Asturias Princess Foundation, which is named for Spanish Crown Princess Leonor.
• Sen has devoted his career to studying poverty and theories of human development. His 1981 essay on Entitlement and Deprivation famously proved that the greatest famines in history took place when food was available but some groups couldn’t access it.
• Sen’s theories on a person’s capacity, interacting with the concept of “positive freedom,” or absence of interference, have been incorporated into different social science disciplines and inspired UN development plans.

• Bharat Ratna Professor C.N.R. Rao has been selected for the International Eni Award 2020 towards his research into renewable energy sources and energy storage. It is also called the Energy Frontier award. This is considered to be the Nobel Prize in Energy Research.
• The Energy Frontiers award has been conferred for his work on metal oxides, carbon nanotubes, and other materials and two-dimensional systems. Professor Rao has been working on hydrogen energy as the only source of energy for the benefit of all mankind.
• The Eni Award is given by the Italian oil and gas company Eni with the aim of encouraging better use of energy sources and increased environmental research.
• The Eni Awards 2020 will be presented on 14 October 2021, during an official ceremony held at the Quirinal Palace in Rome.

• Naturalist Jane Goodall has been conferred the Templeton Prize 2021 in recognition of her life's work on animal intelligence and humanity.
• Dame Jane Morris Goodall is an English primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees. Goodall is best known for her 60-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960, where she witnessed human-like behaviours amongst chimpanzees, including armed conflict.
• The award is given by John Templeton Foundation, USA for outstanding contributions in affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.

• Shankar Balasubramanian, a British-Indian chemist from the University of Cambridge, along with his colleague David Klenerman have won the Millennium Technology Prize for their innovation of Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS), technology that enables fast, accurate, low-cost and large-scale genome sequencing – the process of determining the complete DNA sequence of an organism’s make-up.
• This means huge benefits to society, from helping the fight against killer diseases such as COVID-19 or cancer, to better understanding crop diseases and enhancing food production.
• The Millennium Technology Prize is Finland’s tribute to innovations that promote the well-being of mankind and society. Technology Academy Finland (TAF) is the home of the Prize and the President of the Republic of Finland is the patron of it.

Leading nutrition expert Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted was announced as the 2021 World Food Prize Laureate for her achievements in pioneering fish-based food systems to improve nutrition, health and livelihoods for millions around the world.

• Dr. Thilsted was the first to establish that many small fish species commonly eaten across Southeast Asia are an important source of essential micronutrients and fatty acids and improve the absorption of nutrients in plant-based foods, reshaping scientific understanding of the benefits of fish in diets.
• This breakthrough has helped prioritize increases in fish consumption and production, transforming the diets and incomes of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
• Dr. Thilsted is the seventh woman to be awarded the World Food Prize and the first woman of Asian heritage.
• Now a Danish citizen, Dr. Thilsted descends from a family of Indian migrants to Trinidad and Tobago, and she began her career as the first and only woman stationed in Tobago’s Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries.
• World Food Prize is presented by the World Food Prize Foundation located in Des Moines, USA.
• Indian-American soil scientist - Dr. Rattan Lal was the winner of the World Food Prize 2020.

• The 74th British Academy Film Awards, also known as the BAFTAs, were held on 10 and 11 April 2021 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2020 and early 2021.
• It was presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Major Awards & Winners

• Best Film: Nomadland
• Best Director: Chloé Zhao – Nomadland
• Best Actor in a Leading Role: Anthony Hopkins – The Father
• Best Actress in a Leading Role: Frances McDormand – Nomadland

• Union Minister of Education Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' presented the AICTE Lilavati Awards 2020 on women empowerment to the winners in New Delhi on 11 April 2021.
• The awards were based on the theme 'Women Empowerment’ across 6 sub themes - Women's Health, Self-Defense, Sanitation and Hygiene, Literacy, Women Entrepreneurship, and Legal Awareness.

Winners in Different Sub-themes

• Women Entrepreneurship: SWEAT (Sona Women Entrepreneurship and Training) from Sona College of Technology, Tamil Nadu.
• Digital Literacy:Bharatiya Vidyapeeth.
• Literacy: Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship Development Pune.
• Women's Health: WIT Women Health Coalition from Walchand Institute of Technology, Maharashtra.
• Legal Awareness: Radiant Seetha from Thiagarajar Polytechnic College.
• Self Defense: Paritrana from St. Joseph's College of Engineering, Tamil Nadu.

• On 31 March 2021, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, declared Dr. Aho and Dr. Ullman as the winners of this year’s Turing Award for their work on the fundamental concepts that underpin computer programming languages.
• Given since 1966 and often called the Nobel Prize of computing, the Turing Award comes with a $1 million prize, which the two academics and longtime friends will split.
• Dr. Aho and Dr. Ullman helped refine one of the key components of a computer: the “compiler” that takes in software programs written by humans and turns them into something computers can understand (Machine Language).

• Professor Suman Chakraborty, a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur has been selected for the 30th GD Birla Award for Scientific Research for his outstanding contribution to engineering science and its applications in developing technologies for affordable healthcare.
• Instituted in 1991, the award is given by KK Birla Foundation.
• The award recognises eminent Indian scientists below the age of 50 for their original and outstanding contributions to any branch of science or technology.

• Noted writer Dr. Sharankumar Limbale will receive the 30th Saraswati Samman 2020 for his Marathi novel ‘Sanatan’ that features the story of socio-cultural struggles of the untouchables.
• The Saraswati Samman is an annual award instituted by KK Birla Foundation in 1991.
• The winner of the award is selected from the outstanding works from 22 Indian languages.