Speaker Details

About Speaker

Professor Maharaj Krishan Pandit is Chief Executive Officer, Institution of Eminence, Dean & Chair, Research Council & Director, CISMHE, University of Delhi. He is Radcliffe Fellow, Harvard University, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. In addition, he is Dean, Faculty of Science, Head, Department of Environmental Studies, University of Delhi. Professor Pandit is a renowned expert on Himalayan ecology, the environment and sustainability. His work on impact of dams on biodiversity and human communities is considered a pioneering work (Science, 2013). The primary quest of his research is to understand the genetic and genomic causes of plant rarity and invasion (Jour. Ecol. 2011 (Nature, 2011); New Phytologist, (2014), and impact of land use and climate change on human livelihoods, ecology, biodiversity, rivers and water resource sustainability (Nature, 2013). His long-time research on the Himalaya found expression in a Nature (2020) article on “The Himalaya Should be a Nature Reserve, last summer. Professor Pandit is an acclaimed author of several works related to conservation and sustainability; his works have appeared in top-ranking international journals such as Nature, Science, Journal of Ecology, New Phytologist, BioScience, Conservation Biology, Biodiversity & Conservation and PLoS One to name a few. Prof. Pandit’s book, Life in the Himalaya: An Ecosystem at Risk, published by Harvard University Press, reflects on the conflicts between natural and the anthropogenic.