Ravi joined the World Bank Group in 1974, and transferred to the CGIAR Secretariat as Financial Officer in 1984. He rose to head the Secretariat's Finance and Investor Relations Team as Lead Financial Officer. He served on the Boards of IFAR and the CGIAR Gender and Diversity Program. He supported the CGIAR and its mission in myriad ways.

In the light of his outstanding role in the CGIAR and IFAR, IFAR's Board of Directors, in consultation with the Tadvalkar family, decided that commencing in 2005 the award made to the youngest woman grantee under the annual IFAR Small Grants Program would be designated the Ravi Tadvalkar Memorial Scholarship.

Designating the award in his name is a means of memorializing his invaluable contributions to the CGIAR System, his commitment to capacity building in developing countries, his concern about diversity and gender issues in general, and his pro bono support for IFAR which he helped to reawaken.

Grantees

2010: Garba Hadiza Anaroua from Niger was awarded the Ravi Tadvalkar Memorial Scholarship for 2010. Her project will focus on combating bacterial blight, a major disease of irrigated rice, through a better understanding of blight epidemics and the identification of resistance genes. The sponsoring Center is the Africa Rice Center.

2009: Marie-Chantal Niyuhire from Burundi was awarded the Ravi Tadvalkar Memorial Scholarship in 2009. She worked on documenting the dissemination and adoption of improved bean varieties on the basis of rural household and market surveys. CIAT. The sponsoring Center was CIAT.

2008: Nelly Hovhannisyan (Armenia) was awarded the 2008 Ravi Tadvalkar Memorial Scholarship. The focus of her work was the conservation and assessment of wild wheat for disease resistance in Armenia . The sponsoring Center was Bioversity International.

2007: Saidakhon Shadmanova was the recipient for the Ravi Tadvalkar Memorial Scholarship for 2007. She worked on identifying barriers to groundwater use for irrigation in Uzbekistan and Kazkhstan. The sponsoring Center was IWMI.

2006: Namita Srivastava was awarded the Ravi Tadvalkar Memorial Scholarship for 2006. She worked on the identification and field testing of salinity tolerant groundnut in saline areas of India. The sponsoring Center was ICRISAT.

2005: As the youngest female grantee in 2005, Namita Srivastava who was sponsored for a grant by ICRISAT, is the first recipient of the Ravi Tadvalkar Memorial Scholarship. She will carry out a study on screening for salinity tolerance in a mini core collection of pigeonpea and groundnut, in association with colleagues at ICRISAT, and will develop links within the CGIAR System.