Om Prakash Gautam Faculty Chair
Dr. Rajeev Gautam (BT/CHE/1974) established the Om Prakash Gautam Faculty Chair to support and recognize a distinguished professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. He is a distinguished global business leader, technologist, and chemical engineer with nearly five decades of leadership in the energy, chemicals, advanced materials, and process technologies sectors. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Solstice Advanced Materials and as a Board Member of NN, Inc.. He previously held senior leadership roles at Honeywell, including President and CEO of Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies. In recognition of his professional achievements, he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur in 2020.
Current Occupant
Prof. Jayant K. Singh
(Jan. 25 - Jan. 2028)
Prof. Jayant K. Singh (BT/CHE/1997) is a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, with research interests in material modeling, thermodynamics of complex fluids, molecular simulation, adsorption and separation, and force-field development. His work focuses on AI- and physics-based discovery of materials, specialty chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, along with formulation stability and porous adsorbent design for industrial applications.
He leads a research group that develops computational tools such as MIST, used for sorption and phase equilibrium calculations, and has translated research into deployable innovations including Bhu-Parikshak (soil sensing device) and Munh-Parikshak (early oral cancer detection tool).
In 2019, he co-founded Prescience Insilico, which accelerates discovery in drugs, chemicals, and materials using an integrated AI- and physics-based platform for FMCG and pharmaceutical industries.
He holds a B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur (1997), an M.S. in Computer Science (2002), and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (2004) from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, 2004 , and has received several honors including the SERB STAR Award and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship.