Dr Felix Bast is an award winning teacher and science writer based at Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, Punjab. He is born in Kerala and received his B.Sc with university first rank and gold medal. He received his MSc from University of Madras, and worked at IIT Bombay as CSIR JRF. In 2005, he was selected under prestigious Monbukagakusho Japanese Government International Doctoral Fellowship and earned his PhD in molecular phylogenetics from MEXT, Japan (Monbukagakusho Japanese Government International Fellow) in 2010.
Dr. Felix received a number of international recognitions and underwent training from a number of institutions worldwide. In 2007 he underwent 2 months’ research and training at Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington with fellowship from National Science Foundation, USA. In 2009 and 2013, he underwent training at Natural History Museum, London (2009) and Marine Biological Association, Plymouth (2013), UK, Supported by International fellowships from British Phycological Society. In 2018 he received prestigious NAM-Leibniz International Fellowship and underwent 3 months’ research sabbatical at Leibniz-Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung (ZMT), Bremen, Germany. In addition, he visited a number of countries for research works and dissemination of findings, including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong, Thailand and China.
Dr. Felix received a number of national recognitions as well. He served as an invited in-residence intern with President of India as an “Inspired teacher” for one week at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi in 2015. He had been a recipient of “INSA-INSPIRE Faculty Award” from Department of Science and Technology, Government of India in 2012. Dr. Felix received “Teaching Innovator Award” from MHRD, Govt. of India in 2019. He is an elected fellow of INSA-INYAS, New Delhi.
His major research contributions include the discovery of three new species of marine algae from Indian coast (named after him), the discovery of endophytic algae from the Indian Ocean for the first time, and demystification of blood rain phenomenon. He is the Principal Investigator of 10 research and teaching grants from agencies including UGC, DST, Ministry of Earth Sciences, ICSSR, and Indian Academy of Sciences with a funding of 1.5 crore rupees. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and 3 books. Dr. Felix is actively involved in transdisciplinary research combining liberal arts with sciences. In 2014, he received a major research grant from ICSSR to work on linguistic phylogeny of Indian Languages and did pioneering studies on phylolinguistics of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan language families. He has guided 1 PostDoc, 9 PhDs, 16 M.Phil, 24 MSc and 1 international exchange fellow. Dr. Felix is an early adopter of e-learning and involved with UGC e-PG pathshala and UGC SWAYAM MOOC. In 2016 Dr. Felix undertook an expedition to Antarctica, and stayed at India’s research stations, Bharti and Maitri, as part of Ministry of Earth Sciences “Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica-36” delegation from December 2016 to April 2017. Dr. Felix is a known science writer in India with his contributions regularly appearing in Resonance, Science Reporter, Dream2047, The Hindu, Times of India and so on. He is also involved with science education and popularization with a number of science outreach talks at local schools, libraries, colleges and universities.
His website is accessible at the following URL: http://bit.ly/FelixLab
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