NRI Maitreyee Wairagkar nominated for Nature\'s ‘Inspiring Women in Science’ award

HYDERABAD: Maitreyee Wairagkar, a neuroscientist and neuroengineer who is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis, has been nominated for the prestigious ‘Inspiring Women in Science’ award by the leading scientific journal ‘Nature’ in partnership with Estée Lauder.

She is the only Indian on the list of early career women scientists whose works include developing vaccines for Coronavirus and co-leading the black hole imaging project.

Maitreyee, an Indian by birth, is among the six early career women researchers from over the world nominated for the prestigious award to be announced next week.

She has earned the nomination for her work in neurotechnology so far. “There is a severe need for research in the field of neurotechnology so that we can help people with neurological disorders become independent,” Maitreyee told Deccan Chronicle.

Crediting her mentors and erstwhile educational institutes which include the University of Reading and Imperial College London and her current institution, UC Davis for the nomination, an elated Maitreyee said, “The main area of my work includes developing advanced neurotechnology using artificial intelligence. I work on brain-computer interfaces to enable people with severe motor and speech impairments to communicate directly via their brain signals.”

“The nomination itself is a very big honour for me as the other nominees have stupendous work to their credit,” she said.

Other nominees are Kizzmekia Corbett, an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Lia Medeiros, a co-lead of the EHT Gravitational Physics Working Group, a member of the EHT’s Junior Scientist Council, and an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow, working at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Chiara Mingarelli, a gravitational-wave astrophysicist, looking to understand how supermassive black holes in the centers of massive galaxies merge.

Taylor Nye, a postdoctoral research scholar in the Hultgren Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, working to combat antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.

Maheshi Ramasamy, a doctor, and scientist working in Oxford, UK. Maheshi studies infectious diseases and how the body defends itself from them.