Dr Saha wins Science category at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards

27 September 2021

Founded by Pinky Lilani CBE DL in 1999, the Asian Women of Achievement Award celebrates multi-cultural Britain and the contributions made by diverse cultures and talents to UK society. The awards play a key role in redefining the contribution of Asian women and informing a new positive and pro-diversity debate.

Dr Saha is a marine chemical ecologist and is passionate about investigating the ‘language of life’ in our oceans and in particular, how marine organisms 'talk' to each other. Over the years, she has developed an expertise 'eavesdropping' on chemically-mediated interactions between seaweeds and microbes under present and future ocean conditions.

As well as Dr Saha’s impressive research record, she is an Editor on three high-ranking journals, a Reviewer for 16 journals, and sits on multiple grant review boards. She was recently awarded a prestigious Visiting Professorship by the University of Toulon. She is also very active in communicating often complex topics to a wide range of audiences, including school students.

In addition to her research goals, a key part of Mahasweta’s vision is to create a healthy working environment where young scientists from all backgrounds can thrive. She is passionately dedicated to the development of the next generation of scientists through her supervision and mentoring activities, such as being a British Ecological Society mentor for female scientists.

Mahasweta commented: "I feel honoured to receive this award and very much thankful to AWA for this recognition. I am very happy to have met so many inspiring and high achieving women from different fields of work through AWA. Such awards are extremely important recognizing the valuable and significant contribution Asian women make to the British society. I would like to thank my nominator from PML, my mentor and other colleagues involved in the nomination. I am also grateful to have a very supportive husband who always supported my career decisions despite the hardships we went through to achieve a work-life balance. My advice to other Early Career Researcher (ECR) women of color would be to never listen to naysayers, break all stereotypes and challenge gender inequality, discrimination and imbalance in science."

For more information about Dr Saha please visit her profile page.