Ajay Kumar Sood
Ajay Kumar Sood is the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, a role he started in 2022. He is also the Chairperson of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology & Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC). Sood is also a National Science Chair Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. He was a member of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) from 2018 to March 2022 and from 2009 to 2014, he had also served as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) to the Prime Minister of India.
Sood has a Doctorate in Physics from IISc Bangalore. His research interests include the Physics of Quantum materials, soft and active matter. He has published more than 450 papers in peer-reviewed journals and holds several patents.
He was President of the Indian National Science Academy (2017-19), President of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2010-12), and Secretary-General, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Trieste, Italy (2013-2018). He has received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the G. D. Birla Award for Scientific Research, the TWAS Prize in Physics, the Millennium Gold Medal of the Indian Science Congress Association, the Sir C. V. Raman Award of the UGC, the Homi Bhabha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy, G. M. Modi Award for Science and Technology, 25th SIES Sri. Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi National Eminence Award in the category of Science & Technology and Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Life Time Award by Indian Science Congress, among others.