IIT-Kharagpur appoints Rintu Banerjee as institute’s first woman deputy director

Prof. Banerjee is the founder head and presently the chairperson of the P K Sinha Centre for Bioenergy and Renewables.

She has also served as the Head of the Centre for Rural Development, Innovative and Sustainable Technology and Head of the Department of Agricultural & Food Engineering at IIT Kharagpur for 3 years.

In her career span, she has held many important portfolios including Chairperson of Centre of Excellence in Precision Agriculture & Food Nutrition; Nodal Coordinator for Australia and New Zealand for SPARC & Coordinator for RuTAG.

Prof. Banerjee has completed her PhD in Microbial Biotechnology from the Chemical Engineering Department at IIT Kharagpur. From the beginning of her career, she was engaged in industry-academy collaborative research activities.

"As an outcome of her research, she has transferred several technologies to different industries and have many national/international patents to her credit. Recently, she has successfully transferred her 1G & 2G Ethanol technology to the industry for commercialization," an official statement from IIT said.

She has published two books on environmental biotechnology and OMICS-Based Approaches in Plant Biotechnology. Besides that, she has handled several government/private/industry-sponsored projects.

She has visited several countries as a Visiting Professor and for various scientific collaborations including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Egypt, Australia, the US, Taiwan, Japan, the UK, South Korea, Laos, Thailand, Dubai, Doha, Brazil, Canada, and Malaysia among others.

Prof. Banerjee was conferred the Panjabrao Deshmukh Award for Outstanding Women Scientist from ICAR; Best Woman Bioscientist from Biotech Research Society of India; Young Scientist Award’ 94 from the Association for Food Scientists and Technologists (India); Dr. Prem Dureja Endowment; Institute Chair Professor from IIT Kharagpur; Louis Pasteur Award; Madan Mohan Malviya Award and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award.

She has also received the Most Inspiring Women Engineer/Scientist for the year 2014, for her exemplary work in Science & Technology by Engineering Watch, New Delhi, and has more than 12000 citations under her name.

Speaking on being the first lady Deputy Director of IIT Kharagpur, Banerjee said, “It is my utmost privilege and honour to be the Deputy Director of IIT Kharagpur. Previously as the Dean of Research & Development, I wanted to develop opportunities of innovation and sustainable inventions with affordable technology."

"As the Deputy Director of the largest IIT in the country, my intent is to fastrack the economic progress of the country through innovative solutions provided by IIT Kharagpur along with uplifting the Institute’s ranking both on national and international levels.

"With industry 4.0 and digitronics making inroads using smart technology for ongoing automation of traditional industrial practices, the institution should boost its performance indicators to suit best in industry collaborations and indulges to develop strong policy mission programme with the government that sensitize people to ‘Make in India & Make for the World’," she said.