Prof. Sachchida Nand Tripathi is the inaugural Dean of Kotak School of Sustainability at IIT Kanpur and Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and jointly with the Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering. Prof. Tripathi has recently been honored with the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Medal 2024, given in recognition for conducting exceptional research in developing regions.

In the past decade, Prof. Tripathi has undertaken seminal work in developing state-of-the-art air quality monitoring and management technologies in India. He is credited with implementing the first large-scale dense real-time sensor-based air quality network across two largest states located in the IGP region in India, which has encouraged several Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to adopt this technology for improving decision making. His work has directly impacted policy making at the national level, while continuing to guide over 25 Ph.D. thesis and mentored several successful startups who have gone on to become market leaders.

Prof. Tripathi’s broad area of work in atmospheric sciences includes aerosol-induced cloud invigoration effect, regional climate changes, AI/ML-enabled dynamic hyper-local source apportionment and low-cost sensor-based air quality monitoring. He is leading an international center of Excellence on Advanced Technologies for Monitoring Air quality iNdicator (ATMAN) under the aegis of Principal Scientific Adviser’s office to Government of India.

Prof. Tripathi is the Project Director of the “AI Centre of Excellence (AI-CoE) for Sustainable Cities,” an MoE initiative under the mission "Make AI in India, Make AI Work for India." The project focuses on scalable solutions for energy forecasting and logistic planning, digital twin for urban mobility, air quality monitoring and spike detection of pollution episodes, flood management, and smart microgrid planning, involving consortium of leading Higher Education Institutes in India and diverse industry partners to achieve optimal urban governance.