Kolkata, Aug 3 — Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay from the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) will be conferred the prestigious Maria Petrou Prize later this month.
The professor from the Machine Intelligence Unit will receive the award during the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) to be held in Lyon from August 17 to 22, ISI has confirmed.
A Padma Shri recipient, Bandyopadhyay is one of the country’s pre‑eminent computational biologists and has also served as director of the ISI. She has been a member of the Prime Minister’s Science Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM‑STIAC) since 2018.
A pioneering researcher on algorithmic optimisation in biological data analysis, she is credited with discovering a genetic marker for breast cancer, the simultaneity of HIV and cancer occurrence, and the role of white matter in Alzheimer’s disease.
Bandyopadhyay began her higher education with a BSc (Physics Hons) from Presidency College (now University), Kolkata. She completed her BTech from the University of Calcutta, followed by an MTech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, and later obtained a PhD from ISI.
Her professional career started as a lecturer at ISI, Kolkata, in 1999.
Her research interests include Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Computational Intelligence, Pattern Recognition, Data Mining and Multiobjective Optimisation.
She has also held positions as a researcher and faculty member with various foreign academic institutes.
The professor has authored more than 300 research papers, book chapters and conference proceedings, along with several monographs, edited books and co‑edited conference volumes. She holds a patent on data retrieval and knowledge mining.
She has delivered plenary, keynote and invited lectures worldwide and supervised numerous students now placed in leading academic institutes. She also serves on several committees and editorial boards.
Her awards include the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2010), TWAS Prize in Engineering Sciences (2018), Infosys Award in Engineering and Computer Science (2017), J.C. Bose Fellowship (2017), Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2009‑2010) and Swarnajayanti Fellowship (2006‑2007).