Pranab Das, chair and professor of physics, recently returned from a trip to India and China where he reviewed three award-winning teams of researchers under the GPSS Major Awards Program. He conducted intensive interviews with and listened to research presentations from over thirty researchers and scholars in the areas of science and technology, Indic and Chinese culture, Hinduism, Taoism, philosophy and history. In the process, he circumnavigated the globe in fifteen days.
Dr. Das is the leader of the Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality programs. The Major Awards Program provides seven research teams around the world with support ranging from $150,000 to more than $250,000 over three years. Winners were selected on a highly competitive basis by a committee of leading scholars from the U.S., the UK, Europe and Asia in the fall of 2006. Each winning group will be subject to outside review by Dr. Das or his staff twice during their three-year project period. The award funds and program expenses are paid from a two-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation and jointly administered by Elon and UIP, a research and administrative institute in Paris, France.
The three award-winning teams visited last month by Dr. Das are headed by Dr. Makarand Paranjape, Chair of the Department of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, Dr. Kang Ouyang, Vice President of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China and Dr. Jiang Sheng, Dean of the Institute for Religion, Science and Social Science at Shandong University in Jinan, China.