In a unique honour, Indian woman scientist Mala R Chinoy has been chosen for the 2006 Science Spectrum Trailblazer award for her pioneering work in cardiopulmonary defects in newborns.
Chinoy, professor of Surgery at the Penn State College of Medicine, is one of five Indian origin scientists to be honoured with the Trailblazer awards in 2006.
In 2005, she was awarded the Emerald Honours Award for career achievement by the Minorities in Research Science organisation.
The Trailblazer awards, also given by the MIRS organisation, will be presented in Baltimore on September 15.
For the past two decades, Chinoy has focussed on cardiopulmonary birth defects in the congenital diaphragmatic hernia, a condition frequently observed in newborns.
She has been working in the US since 1988 and was instrumental in developing a reproducible animal model of this human condition in 1995.
The research by Chinoy, who hails from Rajkot in Gujarat, led to the understanding that the specific time in which embryos are exposed to air pollutants inhaled by mothers resulted in cariopulmonary defects and rendered lungs functionally defective.
The others named for the award are Veena Rao of Morehouse School of Medicine, Sharmila Majumdar of the Musculoskeletal Research Group, Satyandra Gupta of University of Maryland and Satish Gadde of Siemens Power Generation Inc.
The Trailblazer awards are given to scientists who are pioneers in their field and seen as outstanding Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, and African American professionals.