Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, Director General, CSIR received the prestigious TWAS Medal Lecture Award instituted by the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World from the hands of His Excellency, President Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt on 30 November 2005 in Alexandria, Egypt. Dr. Mashelkar received this award for his pioneering basic research in polymer science. 

The other award medal lecture winners were Nobel Laureate Prof. Ahmed Zewail of USA and Prof. Del Pino Veintimillia of Equador.

Dr Mashelkar delivered a scientific lecture entitled ‘ On putting life into gels' on 2 December 2005 at the annual gathering of the Fellows of TWAS. He described the breakthroughs on switching biomimetic hydrogels, metal ion initiated healing and macroscopic self organization in gels that his research group in Polymer Science and Engineering made during 2000-2005 at National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune.