Dr Ganesan Venkatasubramanian, assistant professor, department of psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (NIMHANS) has won the SCOPUS - Young India Scientist Awards 2006.
Dr Venkatasubramanian is the lone recipient in the field of medicine to receive this award, instituted by Elsevier, a global publisher in science, technology and medicine.
The award was based on the research and academic efforts by Dr Venkatasubramanian, who has been engaged in the investigation of neuro-imaging in psychiatry disorders, functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and related areas of computational neuro anatomy.
The study involved examining aspects of psychiatric disorders involving phenomenology, clinical neurological abnormalities, illness characteristics and brain abnormalities with focus on Schizophrenia. He was also involved in examining patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and subjects at high risk for alcohol dependence. His research work has been published in various peer-reviewed international journals with high impact factors.
Dr Venkatasubramanian, is among the first Indians to have a publication in the oldest and one of the most prestigious biomedical journals, "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society". He plans are to take this advanced psychiatric neuro-imaging research further by integrating it with exploration from the perspectives of human evolutionary neurosciences.
A medical graduate from Stanley Medical College, Dr Venkatasubramanian has bagged 8 gold medicals from the Dr MGR Medical University, Chennai and was a topper in MD with a Silver Jubilee Award for the best outgoing student from NIMHANS. Dr Venkatasubramanian is also a recipient of eight awards in research work including the Young Scientist Award 2004 for the research paper presented in the 12th Biennial International Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia in Davos, Switzerland, February 2004.