When someone feels that there's so much to accomplish, their winning moments lead them to much farther destination targets. Neena Gupta, the eminent Indian mathematician also falls into the same bucket. She bagged the 2021 DST-ICTP-IMU Ramanujan Prize for young mathematicians from developing countries for her outstanding work in affine algebraic geometry and commutative algebra, especially for her solution to the Zariski cancellation problem for affine spaces. The solution she extracted for the Zariski cancellation problem also made her win the 2014 Young Scientists Award of the Indian National Science Academy.

"I feel honoured to receive this prize however, this is not enough. As a researcher, I feel there are lot more mathematical problems that we have to find a solution for. Getting recognised for the work definitely motivates to do work harder in the research field.”, she said. 

Gupta, who earned a masters and PhD in mathematics from the Indian Statistical Institute, is currently a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. 

After bagging this prestigious award, Gupta became the third woman and the fourth Indian to receive the Ramanujan Prize. Interestingly, three of the other four winners are also associated with the ISI Kolkata. "ISI Kolkata is one of the premier institutes for any one who is interested in pursuing statistics and mathematics for higher education. The course structure, faculty and the environment of the institute is the reason why its alumni are highly successful in their fields,” Gupta said. 

Institutes that promote productive learning deserve a million salutes because it is there, that seeds to a progressive world are sown.