Dr. Kalachand Sain, FNA, FASc, FNASc, FTAS, FAPAS
J.C. Bose Fellow, GoI
Director, Wadia Institute Of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun.
http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?hl=en&user=9nhStVcAAAAJ
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. Earlier, he was the Chief Scientist & Head of Seismic Group at CSIR-NGRI. He is also an honorary Outstanding Professor at the AcSIR, Ghaziabad.
His expertise includes AI/ML, seismic tomography, attribute characterization, advanced processing and rock physics. His research covers wide-ranges of sciences: gas-hydrates, geothermal and conventional hydrocarbon energy resources; sub-volcanic imaging; basin evolutions; geo-dynamics and seismo-tectonics; glacial dynamics; climate change; geo-hazards due to earthquakes, landslides, avalanches, flash floods, etc. All these have resulted into 198 SCI articles; 100 Non-SCI articles/documents; 26 book chapters; 5 Authored Books; 7 Edited Volumes; 1 Patent; Section Editor for the ‘Encyclopaedia of Solid Earth Geophysics’ by Springer; Supervision of 13 Ph.Ds., mentoring of 70 Master-dissertations, etc.
He is a Fellow of all three Indian Science Academies: INSA (New Delhi), IAS (Bangalore), NASI (Allahabad), as well as Fellow of AP Akademi of Sciences (Hyderabad) and 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 Geoscience Award by MoES, National Mineral Award by MoM, YS Award of CSIR, Krishnan Medal and Decennial Award of IGU. He is the Vice President of IGU; Secretary General of FIGA; Chairman and Member of several National Committees constituted by SERB-DST, CSIR, MoES, DST, MoE, MoEFCC, Science Academies, RACs/GBs of many National Institutes and Universities.
Main Scientific Achievements:
- Demonstrated subsurface hydrological imbalance to the causes of land sliding at Joshimath (2023)
- Identified seismic precursors from 2021 ice-rock avalanche that led to develop early 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
- Explained recent seismicity in the Delhi-NCR from the Magneto Telluric study (2023)
- Developed AI-based new tools (2022) for auto-delineation of subsurface 3D features from surface data
- Published an Authored Book on Meta-attributes: Artificial Networking, first of its kind (2022)
- Published an Authored Book on ‘Tomography of Wide-angle Seismic Data’, first time in India (2023)
- Projected hydrocarbon and renewable/green energy scenario in India (2022) towards energy security
- 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-hydrates 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