Director

Dr. Kalachand Sain
Director
91-135-2525101 (O)
dir.off’AT’wihg[dot]res[dot]in

For complete CV click here.

Kalachand Sain obtained M.Sc. (Tech) in App. Geophysics from IIT-ISM, Dhanbad and Ph.D. in Active Seismology from CSIR-NGRI (Osmania University), Hyderabad. He visited Cambridge University (UK) and Rice University (USA) as a post-doctoral Fellow, and USGS (USA) as a Visiting Scientist. He is the Director at Dehradun-based Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology – An Autonomous Institute of DST, GoI. He also held additional charge as the Director of Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleo Sciences – another DST-institute, Lucknow for a small period till a new director was appointed there. Earlier, he was the Chief Scientist & Head of Seismic Group at CSIR-NGRI. He is also an honorary Outstanding Professor at the AcSIR, Ghaziabad.
Statement of Work: His expertise includes AI/ML, seismic tomography, attribute characterization, advanced processing and analysis of geoscientific data, rock physics modeling, imaging. His research covers wide-ranges of sciences: climate change; glaciers dynamics and glaciers lakes; seismicity; geo-hazards due to earthquakes, landslides, avalanches, and flash floods; early warnings; seismotectonics, geodynamics and basin evolution; conventional hydrocarbon, non-conventional gas-hydrates, and geothermal energy resources; imaging sub-volcanics; etc. He visited 20 countries, collaborated with 10 international organizations/universities, and numerous organizations in India, delivered more than 100 plenary/invited/keynote lectures covering the said diversified topics. He organised 22 sessions in international/national forums, chaired 40 sessions, conducted many short courses, handled several projects worth of INR 62 crores, and procured INR 160 crores worth industry-standard data for research. All these have resulted into 205 SCI articles; 100 Non-SCI articles/documents; 26 book chapters; 5 Authored Books; 7 Edited Volumes; 2 Patents by Intellectual Office of United Kingdom; Section Editor for the ‘Encyclopaedia of Solid Earth Geophysics’ by Springer; Supervision of 15 Ph.Ds., mentoring of 70 dissertations by Master Students.
Recognition: He is a Fellow of all three Indian Science Academies: INSA (New Delhi), IAS (Bangalore), NASI (Allahabad), as well as a Fellow of AP Akademi of Sciences (Hyderabad) and Founder fellow Telangana Academy of Sciences (Hyderabad); Recipient of J.C. Bose National Fellowship of SERB-DST, National Merit Scholarship by Min. of Education, Raman Fellowship of CSIR, and BOYSCAST Fellowship of DST.
Honored with Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT-ISM, AP Scientist Award, National Award of Excellence in Geosciences by the Min. of Earth Sciences, National Mineral Award by the Min. of Mines, Young Scientist Award of CSIR, Krishnan Gold Medal and Decennial Award of Indian Geophysical Union. He is the Vice President of IGU; Secretary General of Federation of Indian Geosciences Association; Chairman/Core Member of several National Committees constituted by DST, SERB, CSIR, MoES, MoE, MoEFCC, Science Academies, RACs/GBs/Advisories of many National Institutes and Universities.
Main Scientific Attainment:

  • Demonstrated subsurface hydrological imbalance to the causes of land sliding at Joshimath (2023)
  • Identified seismic precursors to 2021 Chamoli ice-rock avalanche that led to develop warning system
  • Established AI Centre of Excellence (2022) at WIHG, Dehradun for application to geosciences data
  • Provided scientific accounts of flash floods/snow avalanches (2022-23) in UK, HP, J&K Himalaya
  • Long-term monitoring of Gongotri glacier and Bhilangana lake against its outburst in Bhagirathi basin.
  • Explained recent seismicity in the Delhi-NCR based on Magneto Telluric study (2023)
  • Developed AI-based new tools (2022) for auto-delineation of subsurface 3D features from surface data
  • Published an Authored Book (2022) on Meta-attributes: Artificial Networking, first of its kind
  • Published an Authored Book (2023) on ‘Tomography of Wide-angle Seismic Data’, first time in India
  • Published an Edited Volume (2022) projecting hydrocarbon and renewable energy scenario in India
  • Mapped geothermal resources in UK Himalaya (2020), and pursuing to convert into green electricity
  • Established Gas Hydrate Research Center (2008) with world-class facilities at CSIR-NGRI-Hyderabad
  • Characterized and evaluated gas-hydrate in KG, Mahanadi and Andaman basins, validated by drilling
  • Estimated critical parameters – pre-requisite for development of gas-hydrates production technology
  • Delineated high-resolution crustal structures over Indian provinces (onshore, offshore and Himalaya)
  • Led scientific cruises for (i) heat flow, (ii) gas-hydrates, & (iii) imaging subduction plate geometries
  • Leading a Project on “Characterization and Assessment of surface and subsurface Processes in Himalaya for Seismogenesis, Geodynamics, Geo-hazards, climate-tectonics, and Natural resources

http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?hl=en&user=9nhStVcAAAAJ