Shyam Sundar Rai from the Department of Earth and Climate Science at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune has been selected to receive the prestigious National Geoscience Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Ministry of Mines, Government of India.

The National Geoscience Awards are conferred to honour individuals and teams for outstanding contributions to various fields of geosciences, advancing our understanding of Earth systems and natural resources. The Lifetime Achievement category, in particular, acknowledges sustained and impactful research, mentoring and service to the scientific community.

Specialising in the areas of geophysics and seismology, Prof Shyam Rai's research is focused on understanding the Earth's structure, earthquake dynamics, and evolution of the India-Himalaya-Tibet region. A large part of his early research career was at the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad. After joining IISER Pune in 2015, Prof Rai played a pivotal role in building the Department of Earth and Climate Science at the institute. He is presently associated with the institute as a visiting faculty and as an INSA Senior Scientist.

Prof Shyam Rai's research is primarily directed towards understanding the Earth's structure, earthquake dynamics, and evolution of the India-Himalaya-Tibet region. To achieve this, he designed high-resolution seismological experiments to create 3-D elastic wave velocity images of the deep earth of the region at various scales. The velocity images from near surface to over 800 km depth are created through the modelling of waveforms (widely referred to as seismic imaging) generated using Earth's ambient noise and earthquake sources. These images have been used to model the physical, chemical, and thermal state of the Earth, which allows one to infer the state of stress and the geological evolution of the region. The research objectives have been accomplished by working cooperatively with a large number of students and researchers in India and across the globe.

The research has been disseminated through over 100 research papers published in international peer-reviewed journals and has resulted in 14 students earning their PhDs. His other domain of research interest is the application of improved methodology for near-surface exploration of natural resources and environmental geophysics, an area where he initiated his research career, earning a PhD.