An Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) professor Rajnish Kumar has received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize. Professor Kumar has been awarded 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 a science award in India presented 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. Started in the year 1985, the award is named after the founder director of CSIR Dr Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.

Professor Kumar is a faculty in the department of chemical engineering. In 2018, he was recognised as ‘highly cited researcher’ in engineering. He has also received the NASI-SCOPUS Young Scientist Award for the year 2016. The professor, as per an IIT Madras statement, has over 10 years of experience in research and teaching with ‘H-index=49 and i10-index=100’ with total citations (>9000) on Google Scholar.

His research interests are in unconventional energy resources including natural gas hydrates, the institute statement added. 

Kumar’s 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 Dr YBG Varma Award for Teaching Excellence in Chemical Engineering. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry [FRSC] in London UK.