Snehadeep Kumar, an Electronics and Electrical Engineering student of KIIT Deemed-to-be-University, has been nominated as a fellow of the prestigious Royal Astronomical Society, London, thus joining the club of select few Indians who have been bestowed with this honour.
He sets his name amongst the world’s greatest scientists such as Charles Babbage and William Herschel to be a fellow of the learned society. He was nominated by the President of The Royal Society of Chemistry, Dr Tom Welton. The fellowship was instituted in 1793.
Snehadeep’s achievement has sent waves of jubilation in the KIIT campus with the Founder of KIIT and KISS Dr Achyuta Samanta congratulating him for the recognition. The Founder, who met him today, said Snehadeep’s multi-faceted achievements are a source of inspiration for hundreds of KIIT students who aim to become scientists in the future.
In May 2021, Snehadeep decided to start his own journal called the Aurora Academic Journal, an online interdisciplinary magazine, to help bright students with original research who could not afford to pay for publishing. Reaching out to friends across the globe, he soon had a team in place. The Journal takes entries from all over the world and across disciplines. The website gets 500 hits a day, with interviews with Dr Robert Lefkowitz, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Dr Gerard’t Hooft, Nobel laureate in Physics, and Dr Tom Welton, President of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
In October 2021, Snehadeep co-founded the Nebula Space Organisation, the first space organisation run entirely by students. The organisation is aiming to launch the world’s smallest space telescope by 2023-24.
He is also an Innovation Fellow at the Harvard Crimson Entrepreneurship Society at Harvard University and also a young research member of the prestigious New York Academy of Sciences. Recently, he has also received a 56 lakh scholarship by Lifology to study at national and international universities.
His journey was published in the famed online newspaper, Global Indian, in March, 2022, which described him as a ‘Teen Scientist’. His father, Mr Tushar Kanti Kumar works at Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and his mother is a homemaker.