CHENNAI : Indian Institute of Technology Madras (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 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.

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.

Congratulating 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. This prestigious award reaffirms our faith in the power of research and underscores the significance of pushing the boundaries of knowledge.”

Prof. Rajnish Kumar is a faculty in the Department of Chemical Engineering. In 2018, he was recognized as ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ in Engineering. He 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.

Accepting this recognition, Prof. Rajnish Kumar, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Madras, said, I am 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. 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. 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.

His research interests 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. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry [FRSC] in London UK.