Abstract

Saumitra Mukherjee is a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He received his MSc and PhD in geology from Banaras Hindu University. He started his scientific career from the Central Groundwater Board, Government of India, in 1985 as a hydrogeologist. In 1989, he joined as a scientist in the Remote Sensing Applications Center, UP, in the Department of Space, Government of India. While working in these two organizations, he explored the difficult terrain of India including the Himalayas, islands, Sundarban delta, and ravines of Bundelkhand for groundwater exploration and rainwater harvesting. In 1992, he joined in Jawaharlal Nehru University to establish the teaching of remote sensing applications in geology. He was a pioneer in Delhi and instrumental in the construction of check dams in the university to solve the water crisis in the water-starved terrain. He has guided 16 doctorate students in different aspects of hydrogeology and remote sensing who are well placed in various organizations in India. He has authored 7 books and more than 75 international papers including journals. He was the guest editor of Geocarto International Journal on the theme “Remote Sensing Applications in Geosciences” in 2012. He is Commonwealth Fellow (United Kingdom) and Executive Fellow of Earth Sciences (India). Based on his academic excellence, he has been selected as an academic excellence committee member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) (United States). He is in active collaboration with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (United States), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Geological Survey of India (GSI), Central Groundwater Board (CGWB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Environment and Forest (MOEF), National Informatics Center (NIC), Defence Terrain Research Laboratory (DTRL), etc. He has worked on various themes on terrestrial and extraterrestrial remote sensing to infer natural resource exploration and natural hazard investigations, including earthquakes, tsunamis, and forest fires in different parts of India, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Africa. Besides these, he has been invited to identify the hidden water resources within south pole of the Moon using Chandrayan-1 data during the 2012–2014 period.