Know Your Chairman of Indian Academy of Microbiological Sciences

Abstract

Ramesh Chander Kuhad, MSc, MPhil and PhD from Department of Microbiology, Bhopal University, Bhopal, India in 1980, 1981 and 1984, respectively. He started his career as an Assistant Professor in Department of Microbiology, Bhopal University, Bhopal in 1985. He moved on to University of Delhi South Campus as Assistant Professor in Microbiology. He has worked as a Senior Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor in Department of Microbiology, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi, India (1990–2003). In the year 2003, he was appointed as Professor and Chairman in Department of Biotechnology, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, India and worked there for next 2 years (2003–2005) and established the department. In 2005, he came back as Professor to Department of Microbiology, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi, India, and headed the Department of Microbiology. He also served as Dean, Faculty of Inter-disciplinary and Applied Sciences (2005–2008), University of Delhi. Currently he is also serving as Joint Director, Institute of Life Long Learning, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi. He has also supervised more than 15 Research Projects, 13 PhD students and has published more than 125 papers in peer reviewed journals, majority of them are in International journals and 3 books. At present he is serving as an Associate Editor of Annals of Microbiology, Editor of Scientific reports (Nature Publishing Group), Journal of Sustainable Bioenergy Systems and Indian Journal of Microbiology. In addition he has also served as Guest Editor of the Special Issue of Biodegradation Journal. He has been the Member of Executive councils, Academic councils, Board of studies and Governing body of several Indian Universities/Colleges of University of Delhi. He has also been the Treasurer and General secretary (1997–2010) and President of Association of Microbiologists of India, AMI (2011) and recently he has been nominated by AMI as first Chairman of Indian Academy of Microbiological Sciences (2012). He has been the Recipient of Commonwealth Scholarship in the year 1985–1986, UNIDO/ICGEB Fellowship in 1994, Long-Term Overseas Research Associateship Award (Government of India) in 1995–1996 and Short-Term Biotechnology Overseas Associateship Award (Government of India) in 2002–2003. He was also the Organizing Chairman of the “49th Annual Conference of AMI and Internal Symposium on Microbial Biotechnology: Diversity, Genomics and Metagenomics” 18–20 Nov, 2008, Delhi, India. The main focus of his research is on Microbiology and Biotechnology of bioconversion of Lignocellulosic materials. In recent years, his main interests have been Bioethanol Production, Biotech-Animal Feed Development from Plant Biomass and Degumming of plant fiber and Biobleaching of Paper Pulp. Over all the main theme of his research is to make use of waste lignocellulosics and especially the crop byproducts.