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Three Indian American researchers — Veena Padmanaban, Ipshita Zutshi and Viraj Pandya — have been selected for the 2025 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists honoring outstanding postdoctoral scientists from academic research institutions across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences selected this year’s honorees from a highly competitive pool of 149 nominations representing 26 institutions, according to a media release.
As one of the three Laureates, Veena Padmanaban will receive a $30,000 unrestricted award, while Ipshita Zutshi and Viraj Pandya two of the six finalists will each receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds.
The 2025 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureates and Finalists will be honored on October 7, at the annual Blavatnik Awards Ceremony held at the American Museum of Natural History.
Padmanaban, nominated by The Rockefeller University, was recognized as a Laureate in Life Sciences for discovering a molecular mechanism allowing sensory neurons to communicate with breast cancer cells to drive metastasis and uncovering novel actionable therapeutic targets.
An Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, alumnus, Padmanaban has discovered that the activation of sensory nerves within breast tumors is crucial in promoting not only cancer growth but also its spread, known as metastasis.
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Breast tumors hijack nearby sensory nerves to become hyperactive and release a neuropeptide called substance P, setting off a chain reaction that makes cancer cells more likely to spread.
Crucially, Padmanaban’s work also shows that this harmful nerve–cancer communication can be blocked using an existing anti-nausea drug called aprepitant, presenting a promising therapeutic opportunity.
Postdoctoral researcher, Ipshita Zutshi, nominated by New York University, has been chosen as a finalist in Life Sciences category.
She was recognized for discovering how the brain integrates dynamic goals with sensory inputs (sound, vision) to guide memory and decision-making — providing a framework for understanding cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders.
With an MS and BEng from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, Zutshi brings a fresh perspective through her work on the hippocampus, a region critical for planning and memory.
She showed that, during goal-directed tasks, hippocampal signals do not mirror environmental stimuli but instead track an individual’s mental trajectory toward a goal.
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Zutshi further demonstrated that these signals arise from circuits whose contributions vary with brain state (e.g., wake vs. sleep). These findings offer a novel framework for understanding how goal-directed signals emerge with changing behavioral demands—and how this flexibility may be disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Viraj Pandya, nominated by Columbia University has been selected as a finalist in Physical Sciences and Engineering category.
He was recognized for groundbreaking discoveries on early galaxy evolution, reshaping our understanding of how galaxies formed and challenging longstanding theories of the early universe.
Research driven by Pandya shows an unexpected result about the early universe: instead of discs or spheres, most early galaxies had elongated, linear shapes aligned with larger-scale, thread-like “filaments” of dark matter that dictated their formation.
Pandya’s work continues to study the co-evolution of visible and dark matter within and around galaxies using an interdisciplinary blend of theory, observations, and AI-accelerated data science, showing us how the echoes of the early universe continue to affect our galactic neighborhood.
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