Bhubaneswar: Himansu Sekhar Biswal of the School of Chemical Sciences, National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar, has been elected a Fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), effective Jan 2027.The NASI Fellowship is among the country’s top scientific honours and is awarded to researchers for significant contributions to science and technology. Biswal got elected to one of India’s national science academies for research carried out entirely in Odisha. The honour comes as NISER marks its 20th foundation anniversary. In 1992, Anadi Charan Dash of Utkal University was elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.Born into a farming family in Rampa village of Bari in Jajpur district, Biswal was educated in Odisha before receiving advanced training at TIFR Mumbai, CEA-Saclay in France and the University of Michigan in the US. He later returned to Odisha to build his research career. His work has focused on hydrogen bonding and non-covalent interactions at the molecular level, with implications for molecular biology, materials science and drug design. He has also developed specialised laboratory instruments and established a laser spectroscopy facility at NISER.Biswal has earlier been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, received the Chemical Research Society of India’s 2026 Bronze Medal and was selected as a DST-INSPIRE Faculty Fellow.
