Physical Research Laboratory Award(PRLA)

Overview

About PRLA

A student cannot apply for the PRL Award, and neither can the scientist who wins it. It reads work already published, it is given in alternate years to an outstanding Indian scientist below 45 years of age, and the file that puts a name forward is written and signed by somebody else. What the winner receives is Rs 50,000 and a medal (PRL, PRL Award).

Of the awards the Physical Research Laboratory administers from Ahmedabad, this is the one a Director of the laboratory started himself. Prof. Devendra Lal, a former Director of PRL, instituted it; the two Hari Om Ashram awards came from funds provided by Pujya Shri Mota of Hari Om Ashram in Nadiad, and the plasma prize rests on an endowment from the Buti Foundation in New Delhi (PRL, PRL Award, PRL, Hari Om Ashram Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Research Award, PRL, Buti Foundation Award).

Read the field list before anything else, because it is narrower than the laboratory's own research programme. PRL asks for innovative theoretical or experimental studies in Earth and planetary systems, including oceanography, atmospheric sciences and meteorology (PRL, PRL Award). That is the whole of it, and it is one band rather than a menu of disciplines to choose from.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The year in an award's name is not the year its process runs in. PRL gives the prize in alternate years, and the 2017 award was still taking nominations in April 2018.

Where that leaves a nominator now is worth stating exactly rather than implying. The most recent call PRL has published for this award is the 2021 one, and its last date of 20 October 2021 has passed (PRL, PRL Award). The awardees list the same page links stops at 2017 by its own title and cannot be opened. Nothing on the site withdraws the award, and nothing on it announces a cycle after 2021. That is a published calendar that has stopped, which is neither an open window nor a closure, and the Director's office is the only place that can say which it is before a file is assembled.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Two lines settle most nominations before anyone reads the science, and only one of them concerns the work.

The first is a birth date, printed in full rather than left as an age. PRL fixed the 2021 test at below 45 on 1 January 2021, with 02.01.1976 as the earliest qualifying birth date (PRL, PRL Award), having used the identical construction four years before that against 1 January 2017 in the joint call (PRL, Hari Om Ashram Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Research Award). The anchor is the cycle's own January, so a scientist who turns 45 in the March after it is still inside the bar, and one born a day too early is outside it whatever month the file is sent.

The second is who holds the pen. PRL names the people who may put a name forward, and the nominee is not among them: Heads of Academic and Research Institutions, Vice-Chancellors, Deans of Universities, Fellows of the Indian Academies of Science and Engineering, and past recipients of the award (PRL, PRL Award). A file arriving under the nominee's own signature is not the thing the call asked for.

Beyond those two, the criteria are short. The nominee has to be an Indian citizen and a working scientist whose contribution falls inside the field list (myScheme, Physical Research Laboratory Award). No degree class, no income test and no employer condition appears anywhere in the call.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The award publishes no list of people who are barred, and the central scheme record leaves that field blank (myScheme, Physical Research Laboratory Award). In practice the excluding is done by the field list rather than by anything about the person.

Earth and planetary systems, oceanography, atmospheric sciences and meteorology leaves most of PRL's own research programme outside the award. Astronomy and astrophysics, atomic, molecular and optical physics, and theoretical physics are all divisions of the laboratory, and none of them appears in the field list this prize reads (PRL, PRL Award, Physical Research Laboratory).

One question on the form looks like a bar and is not one. The proforma asks whether the nominee's achievements have already been recognised by awards or fellowships from a learned body, and asks for the body, the award and the year (PRL, nomination proforma). No published guideline attaches a consequence to that answer. A decorated nominee is being asked to disclose, not to stand down.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing continues after the cheque. There is no tenure, no instalment schedule and no annual condition to satisfy, so there is no renewal form and nothing that can lapse.

What carries forward is a role rather than a payment. PRL counts past recipients among the people entitled to nominate (PRL, PRL Award), so the award converts a scientist from somebody who had to be written about into somebody who can write the next file.

An unsuccessful nomination keeps nothing in reserve. PRL requires a nominee from a previous year to be put up again by making a fresh nomination against the criteria and guidelines then in force (PRL, PRL Award), and because the qualifying birth date travels with the cycle, resubmitting the same file is not an option that stays open indefinitely.

What you get

Award & benefits

Rs 50,000 and a medal is the entire schedule (PRL, PRL Award). Nothing attaches to it: no research grant, no travel allowance, no visiting position at the laboratory and no continuing title.

Set against the other prizes the same laboratory administers, that is the modest end. Run from the same office, the Hari Om Ashram Prerit Senior Scientist Award pays Rs 4,00,000 with a silver plaque and a citation, and sets no age band on the scientist it honours (PRL, Hari Om Ashram Prerit Sr. Scientist Award).

What the amount does not show is how seldom the award lands. PRL's Hall of Fame counts 2 of its own people as holders of the PRL Award, next to 16 for the Hari Om Ashram Award and 14 for ISRO Awards (PRL, Hall of Fame).

• Cash Prize: An amount of ₹50,000/- and a medal.

What to prepare

Documents required

Two documents describe this nomination and they do not ask for the same things. The guidelines printed on the award page set out the enclosures; the proforma downloaded from that same page asks for those and several more besides (PRL, PRL Award, PRL, nomination proforma).

The additions are biographical, and a nominator working only from the page will not have collected them. The form wants a list of technical reports and review articles, details of any books published, and a record of invited lectures given in India or abroad and of any international scientific conference or symposium the nominee has chaired. It also asks for positions held earlier in chronological order, visiting positions abroad, academic qualifications from the bachelor's degree onwards, and the names of five referees with e-mail and mobile number (PRL, nomination proforma).

On the publication side the call is specific about shape as much as content. The complete list carries author names in the order they appear in the papers, and the ten best publications have to be filed as their own listing, an instruction PRL marks essential, with five of the ten preferably from the last five years (PRL, PRL Award).

The form itself is submitted twice over. PRL asks for one copy of the nomination form in MS Word and in PDF, with all relevant enclosures (PRL, nomination proforma).

Step by step

How to apply

The nominator does the sending, and the delivery is split across two mailboxes.

The completed proforma and its enclosures go by e-mail to the Director, PRL at director@prl.res.in, under the subject line 'Nomination for The PRL Award' (PRL, PRL Award). The e-copies of the five important publications do not travel with them. The proforma routes those separately, in PDF, to hoa@prl.res.in (PRL, nomination proforma). The award page never mentions that second address, which is the one instruction a nominator is most likely to miss.

PRL states that the nomination can be made either online or by downloading the proforma, and the only destination it actually prints is the mailbox (PRL, PRL Award). The central scheme record matches that oddity: it lists the application mode as online and carries no application link at all (myScheme, Physical Research Laboratory Award).

Tracking a nomination has no mechanism, and the substitute that works for other awards does not work here. There is no reference number, no login and no payment trail, because nothing is disbursed until a name is chosen, so the copy in the nominator's sent folder is the receipt. The roll that would otherwise close the loop is shut: PRL links a PRL Award Awardees List (1997-2017) from the award page, and that link does not open to the public, returning the laboratory's "You are not authorized to access this page" notice instead, as it stood in September 2026 (PRL, PRL Award, PRL, PRL Award Awardees List). What is left to watch is the award page for a fresh call, the Hall of Fame count, and the announcement PRL puts out when a cycle is decided (PRL, Hall of Fame).

How winners are picked

Selection process

One rule is published, and it is a weighting rather than a threshold. Research carried out in India is what PRL says it gives prime consideration to, with a candidate's body of work as a whole taken into account behind that (PRL, PRL Award). For a discipline built on Indian ocean, monsoon and crustal records that is less of a constraint than it would be in a laboratory science, and it still tells a nominator which half of a mixed career to lead with.

The rest of the decision is simply not described. How the assessment is organised, who takes part in it and what it measures appear neither on the award page nor in the proforma, and the call sets out no shortlist stage.

The one cycle on the public record shows both what the reading rewards and how slowly it moves. The PRL Award for 2011 went to Vineet K Gahalaut of the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad, for work using the GPS system to understand the processes of crustal deformation and the occurrence of earthquakes. PRL announced it in July 2012, alongside four Vikram Sarabhai Research Award winners, with the presentation set for a ceremony at PRL that August (The Indian Express, 12 July 2012).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

PRL issues no separate terms sheet. The conditions that bind sit inside the call, and there are four: the prescribed proforma, the age reckoned against the cycle's 1 January, the India weighting in the assessment, and a fresh nomination for any repeat (PRL, PRL Award).

The format condition is the one most often read as advice. Reprints are accepted as e-files only, and the ten best publications are wanted as a separate listing (PRL, PRL Award). Neither is phrased as a preference.

The proforma closes by putting the nominator on the record rather than the nominee. It ends with place, date, the nominator's signature, and the nominator's name, designation, address and e-mail id (PRL, nomination proforma). No field on the form carries the nominee's signature at any point, which is consistent with a document written about a scientist rather than by one.

Get help

Contact

A nomination is addressed to a post, not to a cell. The addressee is the Director, Physical Research Laboratory, whose campus the laboratory gives as Navrangpura, Ahmedabad - 380 009 (PRL, Contact); director@prl.res.in takes the nomination itself, and hoa@prl.res.in takes the publication e-copies (PRL, PRL Award, PRL, nomination proforma).

General enquiries have a different address. The laboratory publishes info@prl.res.in and a switchboard on +91-79-26314 000 for correspondence that is not a nomination (PRL, Contact).

Prof. Anil Bhardwaj has been Director of PRL since 2017 (PRL, Our Director), which covers both of the calls on the public record for this award.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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