India at 75: Indian women have accomplished historic breakthroughs in science since the 1800s. Through their achievements in different scientific fields including physics, astronomy, space, astrophysics, biology, neurobiology, medicine, and computer science, Indian women have earned titles such as the nation's 'missile woman', 'rocket woman', and 'weather woman', among others.
From Tessy Thomas to Gagandeep Kang, and Vidita Vaidya to Soumya Swaminathan, women scientists have made India proud with their milestones.
As India celebrates Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav to commemorate 75 years of independence, here is a list of inspiring women scientists of the nation.
Tessy Thomas
Tessy Thomas, a scientist at the Defence Research and Development (DRDO), served as the project director for the Agni IV and V missiles. In 2011, she became the first woman to lead missile teams in India.
Dr Thomas is known as the 'missile woman' of India. The Agni IV and V missiles are intercontinental ballistic missiles (land-based, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles with a range of more than 5,600 kilometres) that have very high ranges and are capable of carrying nuclear warheads (explosive head of a missile or a similar weapon).
Dr Thomas' knowledge on the solid propellant systems played an important role in the development of the re-entry system of the missiles, helping them withstand great velocities and temperatures of 3,000 degrees Celsius on re-entering the atmosphere.
According to the Department of Biotechnology, Union Ministry of Science and Technology, Dr Thomas received the 'DRDO Scientist of the Year' Award in 2008, the DRDO Performance Excellence Award in 2011 and 2012, and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration in 2012, among others.
Ritu Karidhal
Ritu Karidhal is a senior scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation. She played an important role in realising the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), India's first mission to the Red Planet. MOM, also known as Mangalayaan, reached the Red Planet in the first attempt. Karidhal is often referred to as the ‘Rocket Woman’ of India.
Karidhal obtained her Master of Science degree in Physics from Lucknow University, and subsequently a Master of Technology degree from Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. She was always fascinated with space, and collected news articles related to space activities conducted by ISRO and NASA during her school days. In November 1997, she joined the Indian space agency.
Karidhal has served as the operations director for several missions conducted by ISRO. As the Project Manager and Deputy Operations Director for MOM, Karidhal was responsible for leading a team to execute the critical operations of the orbiter leaving Earth and capturing Mars.
According to the World Economic Forum, she has published more than 20 research papers.
In 2007, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Azad conferred Dr Karidhal the Young Scientist Award. The Society of Indian Aerospace Technologies & Industries (SIATI) awarded her the Women Achievers in Aerospace Award in 2017.
Bank of Baroda has honoured her with the Birla Sun Achievement Award.
Karidhal has also worked on ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 mission.
Vidita Vaidya
Vidita Vaidya is an Indian neuroscientist, whose primary areas of research are neuroscience and molecular psychiatry.
She is a Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, and a senior editor at the European Journal of Neuroscience.
At TIFR, Vaidya focuses on the neurobiology of emotion. Her laboratory is interested in understanding the neurocircuitry of emotion, the modulation of the neurocircuitry by experiences, and the alterations in emotional neurocircuitry due to complex psychiatric disorders like depression.
According to the TIFR, Vaidya and her team study the molecular and cellular adaptations that arise from sustained antidepressant treatment.
Vaidya received her undergraduate degree in Life Sciences and Biochemistry from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Then, she received her doctoral degree in Neuroscience at Yale University in the lab of Dr Ronald Duman.
Vaidya completed her postdoctoral work at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden with Dr Ernest Arenas, and at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom with Dr David Grahame-Smith.
In March 2000, Vaidya joined the Department of Biological Sciences, TIFR, as a Principal Investigator.
Vaidya has been a Wellcome Trust Overseas Senior Research Fellow (2003-2009), and received the National Bioscientist Award in 2012.
In 2015, Vaidya received the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Medical Sciences.
As a mid-career mentor, Vaidya received the Nature Award for Mentoring in Science in 2019.
In 2021, Vaidya received the JC Bose Fellowship from Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Government of India.
Soumya Swaminathan
Soumya Swaminathan is the first Indian to become the World Health Organization's Deputy Director General, and also the UN agency's first chief scientist.
She is a paediatrician and globally recognised researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, and has more than 30 years of experience in clinical care and research. Throughout her career, she has worked to translate research into impactful programmes.
From 2015 to 2017, Swaminathan was Secretary to the Government of India for Health Research and Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
During her stint at ICMR as the Secretary to the Indian government for health research, she focused on bringing science and evidence into health policy making and building research capacity in Indian medical schools.
Swaminathan received her academic training in India, the UK, and the United States. She has published more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. In 2017, she became the first Indian to become the director general of the WHO.
According to the WHO, Swaminathan is an elected Foreign Fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of all the three science academies in India — the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) on New Delhi, the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) in Bangalore, and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Allahabad.
Aditi Sen De
Aditi Sen De is the first female physicist to be awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize.
Sen De is a professor in quantum information and computation group at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, and is known for her research on quantum information and computation, and quantum communication.
The Indian Physics Association awarded her the Buti Foundation Award in 2012.
In 2018, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) awarded her the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, for her contributions to physical sciences, making her the first woman recipient of this award in the physical science category.
Gagandeep Kang
Gagandeep Kang is the first Indian woman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences.
Known for her interdisciplinary research studying the transmission, development and prevention of enteric infections and their sequelae (conditions which are the consequence of a previous disease or injury) in children in India, Kang has developed practical approaches to support public health.
Kang obtained her MBBS degree in 1986 from Madras University. In 1991, she obtained her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree in Microbiology, followed by a PhD degree in 1998.
Some of her most notable contributions to the field of health include building national rotavirus and typhoid surveillance networks and establishing laboratories to support vaccine trials. She has also conducted Phases I to III of clinical trials for vaccines, a comprehensive approach that has supported two WHO (World Health Organization) pre-qualified vaccines, made by two Indian companies.
Kang carried out Phase I-III studies of rotavirus vaccines. She has built a strong inter-disciplinary research programme that uses detailed field epidemiology (method used to find the causes of health outcomes and diseases in populations) with molecular tools for characterisation of infectious agents and host response to infection.
According to the Royal Society, Kang is investigating the complex relationships between infection, gut infection, and physical and cognitive development, and is seeking to build a stronger human immunology research in India.
According to the Indian National Science Academy, the research conducted by Kang's group has led to practical interventions to prevent diarrhoeal disease.
She is a Professor of Microbiology at the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences in Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, where she has established strong training programmes for students and young faculty in clinical translational medicine.
In 2019, she became the first Indian woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
Kang is currently serving as the executive director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad.
In 2005, Kang was awarded the Lourdu Yedenapalli Award for Excellence in Research, followed by the National Award for Women Bioscientist of the Year in 2006.
The Indian Society for Gastroenterology awarded her the Abbott Oration Award in 2009. The Indian Academy of Tropical Parasitology awarded her the Dr S.C. Parija Oration Award in 2015.
Kang is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India.
Sunita Sarawagi
Sunita Sarawagi is an Indian computer scientist known for her research in databases, data mining, and machine learning, and was the winner of the 2019 Infosys prize in Engineering and Computer Science.
Sarawagi is a professor at IIT Bombay, and was a visiting associate professor at the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, in 2004.
Sarawagi received a bachelor's degree in computer science from IIT Kharagpur in 1991, following which she went to the University of California, Berkeley, to study computer science with database expert Michael Stonebraker. She earned a master's degree in 1993, and completed her PhD in 1996.
Sarawagi has worked as a researcher at IBM Almaden Research Center as a research scholar. She joined IIT Bombay in 1999. She is Institute Chair Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay.
Sarawagi was a visiting scientist at Google Inc. in Mountain View between July 2014 and July 2016. There, she worked on deep learning models for personalising and diversified YouTube and Play recommendations, according to Infosys Science Foundation.
Some of her accolades include the IBM Faculty Award (2003 and 2008), Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (2013), and the Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT Kharagpur (2019).
Sarawagi was awarded the Infosys Prize 2019 in Engineering and Computer Science for her research in databases, data mining, machine learning, and natural language processing.
Devapriya Chattopadhyay
Devapriya Chattopadhyay is an associate professor at the Department of Earth and Climate Science, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune.
Chattopadhyay received her PhD in Geology in 2009 from University of Michigan, following which she worked as an assistant professor in the University of West Georgia till 2010. Then, she joined IISER Kolkata as an Assistant Professor. Before joining IISER Pune in 2019, Chattopadhyay was an associate professor in IISER Kolkata.
Chattopadhyay's areas of research are palaeobiology and marine ecology. According to IISER Pune, she tries to understand how marine organisms respond to their physical and biological environment in the ecological and evolutionary time scales, and she uses shelled molluscs as a model system. Her team also works on modern organisms using under-water observations, and conducts laboratory experiments in aquariums.
In 2011, received the Ernst Mach Scholar award from the University of Vienna, Austria.
The UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), British Council, honoured her with the Staff Exchange Award in 2012.
In 2014 and 2022, Chattopadhyay was again conferred the Ernst Mach Scholar award by the University of Vienna.
Kalika Bali
Kalika Bali is a researcher at Microsoft Research India working in the areas of Machine Learning, Natural Language Systems and Applications, and Technology for Emerging Markets. Bali's research interests lie broadly in the area of Speech and Language Technology.
According to Microsoft, Bali is currently working on Project Mélange, where the researchers try to understand, process and generate Code-mixed language data for both text and speech. Code-mixing or use of more than one language in a single conversation is a phenomenon that is observed in all multilingual societies, and though Code-mixing has been studied in the past as a feature of conversational speech, the rapid rise of social media has made it a common phenomenon for text as well.
Bali is passionate about Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Speech Technology for Indian languages, and believes that local language technology, especially with speech interfaces, can help millions of people gain entry into a world that is till now almost inaccessible to them. NLP refers to the branch of artificial intelligence concerned with giving computers the ability to understand text and spoken words in the same way human beings can.