The Indian Drug Maufacturers' Association (IDMA) has invited nominations for its annual Awards for pharmaceutical analysts for the categories of 'Eminent Pharmaceutical Analyst (EPA)' and 'Outstanding Pharmaceutical Analyst (OPA)'. The Awards will be announced and presented at the IDMA Pharmaceutical Analysts Conference 2004.

For nominations to the category of Eminent Pharmaceutical Analysts (EPA), the Award criteria includes (a) Life time significant contribution in the field of Pharmaceutical analysis, (b) High integrity and commitment to pursuit of excellence, (c) Consistent sharing of expertise and (d) Resident Indian citizen.

While the criteria for the Outstanding Pharmaceutical Analyst Award are (a) Outstanding contribution in the field of pharmaceutical analysis and (b) Resident Indian citizen. The EPA Award, which was started in 1998 is one of the prestigious annual Awards instituted by IDMA. Previous winners of this Award were RS Iyer (1998), Dr. R T Sane (1999), Dr. P R Pabrai (2000), J L Sipahimalani (2001), Dr. S S Handa (2002) and Prof. Y K Agrawal (2003).

The OPA Award, which was instituted in 2002 onwards, was earlier won by Dr. Saranjit Singh (2002), Dr V G Nayak (2002) and Dr. T G Chandrashekhar (2003).

According to an IDMA release, the nominations may be sent, with CV to office of IDMA by August 10, 2004 for consideration for the awards by an appointed experts' committee.