Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla was recently awarded the 2021-2022 Rajib Goyal Prize in Physical Sciences, which “honors Indian scientists who have made a mark in basic and applied sciences research.” The Goyal Prizes were instituted by the late philanthropist Ram S. Goyal to honor Indian scientists and social activists working towards the service of India.
Agarwalla is recognized for his innovative contributions in neutrino physics and detector simulations. He is among four Indian scientists announced for the prize by Kurukshetra University’s Goyal Award Committee.
The award consists of a medal, citation and a cash prize of ₹1 lakh.
Agarwalla, a professor at the Institute of Physics in Bhubaneswar, India, is a visiting researcher at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) in the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research interests include properties of massive neutrinos with a special emphasis on their mass and mixing parameters, beyond the Standard Model (BSM) scenarios in neutrino experiments, neutrino tomography of Earth, and direct and indirect detection of dark matter.
“I am very happy to receive this prize, which will certainly motivate me to excel further in our research to explore the fundamental properties of massive neutrinos,” says Prof. Agarwalla. “We are quite hopeful that in the coming decades, neutrinos will play an important role in probing the internal structure and composition of the deep Earth based on weak interactions.”