New President of AMI—2011

Abstract

Ramesh Chander Kuhad, male, microbiologist, M.Sc., M.Phil. and Ph.D. 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. Then in the year 1988 he moved 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, worked as Head, Department of Microbiology and also as Dean, Faculty of Inter-disciplinary and Applied Sciences (2005–2008). He has published more than 100 papers with SCI-934 (since 1996) and three books. In addition he has been the editor of Indian journal of Microbiology, published by Springer, since 2006 and recently he is serving as the Guest editor for the Special Issue of Biodegradation and 3 BIOTECH Journal. He has been the member of Executive council, Academic council and governing bodies of various Indian Universities and Colleges of University of Delhi. He has also served as Treasurer (9 years) and General Secretary (6 years) for Association of Microbiologists of India (AMI). Recently, he has been selected as President of The Association of Microbiologists of India for the year 2011. He has been the recipient of Commonwealth Scholarship in the year 1985–86, UNIDO/ICGEB Short-Term Fellowship in 1994, Long-Term Overseas Research Associateship Award (Govt. of India) in 1995–96 and Short-Term Biotechnology Overseas Associateship Award (Govt. of India) in 2002–03. He was also the Organizing Chairman of the 49th Annual Conference of AMI and International 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 Lignocellulose Bioconversion. In recent years, his main interests are Bioethanol production, Biotech-Animal feed development and Degumming & Biobleaching of paper pulp. Over all the main theme of his research is to make use of waste lignocellulosics and the crop byproducts in developing value added products.