Prof KK Pant appointed as IIT Roorkee Director

Haridwar (Uttarakhand) [India], November 4 : Professor Kamal Kishore Pant, the former Dean of the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Delhi has been appointed as the Director of the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee).
He succeeded the outgoing Director, Prof AK Chaturvedi.
According to the IIT Roorkee statement, the new director is targeting for the Institute to reach among the top-tier institutions globally. The Institute is also planning to create new research and development infrastructure to promote IIT Roorkee as a significant hub for training a wider spectrum of international scholars and to forge global alliances addressing cutting-edge research and innovation. Prof Pant is also focusing on supporting the establishment of startups, going by the recent landscape of unicorns in India.

Sharing his thoughts, Prof Pant said, "IIT Roorkee had celebrated its sesquicentennial in October 1996 and now completed more than 175 years of its existence. And aligning with the institute's vision, like all my contemporaries, we will work towards scaling greater heights to create a sustainable and equitable society through teaching of cutting-edge academic content using state-of-the-art methodologies and innovative research in science and technology."
"The Institute is looking to oversee the functioning and well-being of all the faculty, staff, and students to facilitate overall professional development. Our mission statement is clearly to promote IIT Roorkee as a significant hub for training a broader spectrum of international scholars to forge global alliances addressing cutting-edge research and innovation", added Prof Pant.
Prof Pant is focusing on a holistic perspective and a comprehensive strategy to accelerate the development of new interdisciplinary fields and to put engineering education on an ambitious path that pushes the frontiers of innovation, discovery, and economic development, said the official statement.
A step to develop Hierarchical Intelligent Cyber-Physical Ecosystems is planned, which will enable collaboration between engineering, arts, and other sciences on a much larger scale than has been done before.
The statement further said IIT Roorkee will focus on areas of Vision 2030 (Sustainable Clean and Green energy, Electric vehicles, renewables, rural industrialization, space, self-sufficiency in food production, distress-free healthcare, and digital India) that will result in employable/entrepreneurial engineers. The key emerging interdisciplinary fields that would be the focus of the Institute in the coming years include Cyber Engineering, Societal Systems, Living Systems Engineering. Biomechatronic/Robotics Engineering, Cognitive Systems Engineering. Knowledge Engineering, Emergent/Complexity Engineering, and Multiscale Systems engineering.
A leading academician, Prof Pant received his PhD (Chemical Engineering) degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1997.
Prof Pant is an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, a Joint Faculty at CRDT IIT Delhi, and Honorary Faculty at the University of Queensland in Australia.
A recent Oxford University study ranked him among the top 2 per cent of scientists worldwide in chemical engineering. His academic and industrial research experience spans over 30 years, with over 220 publications and numerous patents to his credit.
As one of the leading academicians in the country, Prof Pant is working on multiple national and international import technologies. Among them are the work on coal to methanol conversion, e-waste and plastic management, hydrogen generation, CO2 capture and conversion, biomass valorization, etc, using catalysis and reaction engineering.
With premier companies and government agencies, he has successfully completed more than 50 high-impact projects. He is also a Fellow of several national and international academies, which include the National Academy of Science India (NASI) and the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE).
Additionally, Prof Pant group's research work has been awarded twice the Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) award, as well as many other honours, such as the CHEMCON distinguished speaker award, Herdilia Award, Dr A V Rama Rao award for the best PhD supervision, and Dr S S Deshpande award, among others.
Welcoming Prof Pant to the Institute as its new Director, Prof ML Sharma, Dean of Finance and Planning, IIT Roorkee said, "He is recognized for his expertise in futuristic research and for his outstanding position in the scientific community. And as various departments of the IIT Roorkee also regularly undertake research and development utilizing the elaborate and high-tech laboratory facilities, Prof Pant's appointment shall foster the growth of intellectually capable, innovative, and entrepreneurial professionals."