Dr. (Mrs.) P. Nila Rekha has been awarded Jawaharlal Nehru Award for outstanding Doctoral thesis by ICAR in the field of Natural Resource Management for 2005 for her thesis entitled “Impact assessment of paper mill effluent irrigation” submitted to Department of Civil engineering, Anna University. She has applied multidisciplinary approach viz., GIS, remote sensing, hydro geochemistry, groundwater modelling and proved that soil, surface and ground water was not affected. She has also developed guidelines for further expansion of the effluent irrigation scheme without endangering the environment.