Several scientists closely associated with ICTP have recently received prestigious awards and honours. Partha Dasgupta, professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, UK, and co-director of the ICTP-hosted Ecological and Environmental Economics programme, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. The Society honoured Dasgupta for his "uniquely outstanding contributions to environmental biology and ecology." The Royal Society also elected Michele Parrinello, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lugano, Switzerland, a foreign member. Parrinello is being honoured for "his contributions to computer simulation methodologies and algorithms that have had a major impact in the physical sciences." In the 1980s, Parrinello spent several years in Trieste working for both SISSA and ICTP. Padma Kant Shukla, world-renowned expert in theoretical plasma physics who has visited the Centre on numerous occasions and most recently has served as course director of the Workshop on Theoretical Plasma Physics, has been awarded an honorary doctorate in sciences by the Russian Academy of Sciences.