The National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) awarded the Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award 2020 to Nitika Sandhu, molecular geneticist, School of Agricultural Biotechnology, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), for her contribution in the field of plant sciences. Nitika has also been awarded one international and three national funded competitive grant projects during the last two years. Besides, she is a recipient of the Monsanto Beachell Borlaug International Scholarship, which she got during her PhD. She also secured Asian Development Bank Post-Doctoral Fellowship and worked at International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, before joining PAU as a regular faculty. Sandhu has pursued research on molecular breeding to unravel insights of stress-tolerances and is working towards the development of drought-tolerant rice varieties and direct-seeded adapted breeding lines.
PAU vice-chancellor (V-C) Baldev Singh Dhillon, director of research Navtej Bains and director of the school of agricultural biotechnology Parveen Chhuneja congratulated Sandhu.