IIT Madras professor awarded Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras faculty Professor Rajnish Kumar has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for his contributions to fundamental understanding of the nucleation and growth of clathrate hydrates, CO2 sequestration in solid hydrates and methane recovery from marine gas hydrates.

The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is awarded annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for research, applied or fundamental, in biology, chemistry, environmental science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, and physics.

The award has been awarded since 1985 and is named after the founder director of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.

Professor V Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras, said, “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. This prestigious award reaffirms our faith in the power of research and underscores the significance of pushing the boundaries of knowledge.”

Rajnish Kumar is a faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering. In 2018, he was recognised as ‘highly cited researcher’ in Engineering. He is also a recipient of the NASI-SCOPUS Young Scientist Award for the year 2016.

His research is based 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 and institutes. During 2020, he received the YBG Varma Award for Teaching Excellence in Chemical Engineering.