After a long wait, the prestigious Hansraj Nayyar award, for the best research project from the country, was won by a team from AMRI Hospital, Dhakuria, Kolkata, at the recently concluded Criticare 2008, organized by the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine at Bhopal. Ms. Surupa Basu (PhD student, Biochemistry) was the principal investigator. The study was carried out under the supervision of Dr. Arghya Majumdar (HOD, Nephrology) & Dr. S.K. Todi (HOD, Critical Care). The project was assisted by Dr. Mahua Bhattacharya (FNB, Fellow). The study “Microalbuminuria: a marker of sepsis” was acclaimed because of it’s originality, simplicity and universal applicability. When a patient is admitted to the ICU the one question, which is uppermost in the mind of doctors is “is the patient in such a serious state due to sepsis?” This is one condition, which if diagnosed early, can be cured with specific therapeutic measures, but if diagnosed late can lead to a downward spiral of multi- organ failure and even death. Surprisingly even with all our technological advances it sometimes takes a day or more to diagnose this, often leading to grave consequences. This is a simple, cheap, bedside test done on a spot urine sample, which can tell us whether a patient is suffering from sepsis, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, right at the time of admission. This tool which can be utilized in a high tech ICU of a major hospital, in one of the metros, or in a primary health center of a village with equal ease may be of great benefit to the common man, especially in a country like India.