Prof Sudhir Jain
Formerly Professor, Civil Engineering, IIT Kanpur
and presently Director , Indian Institute of Technology , Gandhinagar
Sudhir Jain obtained a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Roorkee (IITR/BT/CE/1979), Masters and Doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. He is a professor in Civil Engineering at IIT Kanpur and has served as the head of the department from 2001 to 2003. He has been a faculty of IIT Kanpur since 1984 except for a sabbatical year at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1994. Jain took over as Dean Resource Planning and Generation at IIT Kanpur on 25th January 2005.
In addition to the teaching and building a strong research program at IIT Kanpur, Dr. Jain believes in practicing what he preaches. He is responsible for development of several seismic codes for the country. He also works as a seismic consultant for a number of major railway bridge projects in high seismic regions of the country.
A visit to the devastated areas after Uttarakashi earthquake in 1991 changed Dr. Jain’s worldview regarding academics vis-à-vis real life engineering problems. On his return, he initiated a very strong outreach activity in civil & earthquake engineering with a vision of improving the state-of-the-art practices in construction industry in India and developed a strongest ever continuing education program for professional engineers. Further, to meet the information need of public and professionals, he raised an endowment fund of rupees 50 lakh for setting of the National Information Center of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE) at IIT Kanpur. NICEE is already receiving tremendous acclaim nationally and internationally for its innovative activities. Dr. Jain strengthened the earthquake engineering group at IIT Kanpur that has carried out several important studies after the earthquakes in 1993, 1997, 2001, 2002 and 2004 and has taken a leading role in the country.
Dr. Jain is the founding National Coordinator of the National Program on Earthquake Engineering Education (NPEEE) supported by the Government of India (MHRD). All seven IITs and IISc Bangalore are working through NPEEE to expand teaching of earthquake engineering in more than thousand colleges of engineering and architecture across the country.
He is on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE) and the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI). He chairs an Ad-hoc Committee of the IAEE on New IAEE Initiatives for Assisting Developing Countries. He also chairs the Small Grants Program for Developing Countries of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), USA. Dr. Jain was elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering in 2002.