Prof. Harsh K. Gupta Former Director at the CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute (CSIR-NGRI), Hyderabad, has been selected as a Fellow of the prestigious “The International Science Council (ISC)”, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to promoting science as a global public good.

The Fellowship is the highest honour that can be conferred on an individual by the ISC to support its vital mission to bring science to society and help address urgent societal problems — such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, water, energy, and food security, as well as urgent transformations required in the research itself. The selection was announced by the President, ISC, Sir Peter Gluckman on 5 December 2022 during the 2022 World Science Forum at Cape Town, South Africa.

Prof. Gupta is an eminent Indian Earth scientist known for his pioneering work on discovering an enormously thick crust of ~70 km below the Himalayas and Tibet Plateau region. He characterised reservoir-triggered earthquakes and developed criteria to discriminate them from normal earthquakes. He is also the recipient of several prominent recognitions, notable among them being, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, Padma Shri, elected Foreign member to the Russian Academy of Sciences, NASI Platinum Jubilee Scientist, Lifetime Excellence Award by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India. Prof. Gupta is the first so far and the only scientist from the developing world to be awarded Waldo E. Smith Medal by the American Geophysical Union. He is also the second from Asia, the only other awardee being from Japan.