S. Vishnu Sharma
IIT Madras faculty Prof Rajnish Kumar has been recognized with the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize. The Prize is bestowed on a person who has made outstanding contributions to human knowledge and progress – fundamental and applied – in a particular field of their specialization.
The Award is being given to this IIT Madras faculty for his exceptional contributions to fundamental understanding of the nucleation and growth of clathrate hydrates, CO2 sequestration in solid hydrates and methane recovery from marine gas hydrates.
Award
The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is a science award in India given annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for notable and outstanding research, applied or fundamental, in biology, chemistry, environmental science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, and physics.
The award, being given since 1985, is named after the Founder Director of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.
IIT Madras director
Congratulating IIT Madras faculty Dr. Rajnish Kumar on this recognition, Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said Dr. Rajnish Kumar’s recognition with the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2022 is a testament to his exceptional contributions to research.
We at IIT Madras are immensely proud of his achievements, which not only reflect his brilliance but also exemplify the spirit of relentless pursuit of excellence in research, he said in praise of IIT Madras faculty.
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‘This prestigious award to IIT Madras faculty reaffirms our faith in the power of research and underscores the significance of pushing the boundaries of knowledge.’
Chemical Engineering
IIT Madras faculty Prof. Rajnish works in the Department of Chemical Engineering. In 2018, he was recognized as ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ in Engineering.
IIT Madras faculty is also a recipient of the NASI-SCOPUS Young Scientist Award for the year 2016. He has more than 10 years of experience in research and teaching with ‘H-index=49 and i10-index=100’ with total citations (>9000) on Google Scholar.
Recognition
Accepting this recognition, IIT Madras faculty, said he was extremely honored to receive the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize-2022 in Engineering Sciences.
I would like to congratulate others who have also received the same award in different fields of science. This award has been made possible because of the hard work of many students who have worked on their theses in my laboratory at IIT Madras and CSIR-NCL, Pune, said IIT Madras faculty.
I also thank all the collaborators and the funding agencies who supported my research. Natural gas hydrates naturally occur beneath the sea-bed worldwide, and they can also be synthesized in the laboratory to provide technological solutions, from CO2 capture and sequestration to sustainable water purification, said IIT Madras faculty.
IIT Madras is at the forefront of research related to carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration and I believe this recognition for IIT Madras will enable us to contribute more in this field of research, said IIT Madras faculty.
Research interests
Research interests of this IIT Madras faculty are in unconventional energy resources including natural gas hydrates. The role of additives in gas hydrate inhibition and growth and their application in methane recovery from marine gas hydrates, flow assurance, hydrate-based gas separation process, and methane storage and transportation are some of the projects in which the group is actively working.
His research group has published close to 140 research articles, book chapters, and patents and has delivered multiple invited talks at international and national conferences/ institutes.
During 2020, he received the Dr. YBG Varma Award for Teaching Excellence in Chemical Engineering. This IIT Madras faculty is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry [FRSC] in London UK.
About IIT Madras
Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) was established in 1959 by the Government of India as an ‘Institute of National Importance.’
The activities of the Institute in various fields of Science and Technology are carried out in 17 academic departments and several advanced interdisciplinary research academic centres.
The Institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes leading to B.Tech., M.Sc., M.B.A., M.Tech., M.S., and Ph.D., degrees in a variety of specialisations.