Nepali geologist Bishal Nath Upreti has been selected as a winner of an international award for his contributions to the investigations of the tectonics of the Himalayas and improving public understanding on the geology of Nepal.

During the 26^th general meeting of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) held in Vienna in Austria, Upreti who is also the president of the Disaster Preparedness Network-Nepal (DPNet) was announced as the winner of the CNR Rao Prize for 2015. DPNet-Nepal is a network that includes more than 100 non-government organisations, UN agencies, government ministries and other agencies involved in the field of disaster risk reduction in Nepal.

The prize was established in 2006 by C.N.R. Rao, an eminent chemist who currently serves as the head of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India to acknowledge dedication and high-impact research by scientists from Least Developing Countries (LDCs) in the advancement of science.

A statement released by TWAS mentioned that Upreti is studying past earthquakes to help shape future preparedness in Nepal and his work has implications in fields ranging from water resources to construction of dams, tunnels, roads and bridges.

The work he has carried out with his collaborators is unveiling the tectonics of the Nepal Himalaya, starting 500 million years ago in Lower Paleozoic time. At that time, Upreti's data suggest, a mountain belt existed long before the Himalaya was born. By investigating the Main Central Thrust – one of the three master faults of the Himalaya – Upreti wrote a chapter on the history of Himalayan uplift after the collision between India and Asia that occurred 55-60 million years ago.

Since the Gorkha earthquake in April in Nepal, Upreti has been engaged in various field-based studies and research works and has engaged in active faults to build the chronology of the historic and prehistoric earthquakes in the Nepal Himalaya. “The data are being used in evaluating the seismic hazard in the Nepal Himalayan region," said Upreti.  His findings including the Global Positioning System data analysed from the field mappings in the Kathmandu Valley has been published in the journal Seismological Research Letters.