The first woman Vice Chancellor of Kerala, Dr Jancy James, has been selected for the prestigious Prof M V Pylee Award for the best academician.

Instituted by Cochin University of Science and Technology, the award carries an amount of Rs one lakh and a citation, a release said here.

Dr Jancy was the former VC of Mahatma Gandhi University and founder Vice Chancellor of Central University of Kerala.

An established author, literary critic, researcher and translator, Dr Jancy has served as member of Kendra Sahitya Akademi and as the National President of the Comparative Literature Association of India.

A post-doctoral Commonwealth Fellow in University of Warwick, UK, Jancy was also a Faculty Research Fellow in Toronto University, Canada.

She was a member of the Indian delegation headed by the HRD Minister at the Indo-US Higher Education Summit at Washington under the Obama-Singh Initiative in 2011, the release added.