Prof. Sachchida Nand Tripathi is the inaugural Dean of the Kotak School of Sustainability at IIT Kanpur and Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and the Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering.
Over the past decade, Prof. Tripathi has made pioneering contributions to air quality monitoring and management technologies in India. He is credited with implementing the largest sensor-based air quality network in the country, enabling cities to adopt data-driven strategies for cleaner air. His innovations have directly shaped national environmental policies, while he has guided over 20 Ph.D. scholars and mentored multiple successful start-ups that have become market leaders.
His research In Iic sciences spans aerosol–cloud interactions, regional climate change, AI/ML-enabled hyper-local pollution source apportionment, and low-cost sensor technologies. As the founder of the Government of India-approved Centre of Excellence for Air Quality Monitoring Technologies (ATMAN), he has led the development of advanced hardware and AI/ML analytics now in use across several Indian states and cities.
In 2024, Prof. Tripathi spearheaded a consortium of 20+ faculty members from four institutes and five major industry partners to establish the country’s first Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (AI CoE) for Sustainable Cities, funded by the Government of India. As Project Director, he leads initiatives applying AI to energy optimisation, real-time air quality policy evaluation, digital twins for urban mobility, and drone-based waste management systems—all aimed at making Indian cities more sustainable.
Prof. Tripathi’s work has earned him some of India’s highest scientific honours, including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, the J.C. Bose National Fellowship, and the Infosys Prize 2023 in Engineering and Computer Science. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), and the National Academy of Sciences of India (NASI), and a recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Banaras Hindu University. He currently holds the Sir M. Visvesvaraya Chair Professorship at IIT Kanpur.
He earned his B.Tech In Civil Engineering from IIT BHU (1992), M.Tech In Environmental Engineering from MNIT Allahabad (1995), and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Reading, UK (2001), followed by postdoctoral research at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and the University of Oxford. Prof. Tripathi joined IIT Kanpur as faculty in 2003 and continues to lead research that bridges science, technology, and policy for a sustainable future.