Krishna Deo Prasad Nigam honored with Humboldt Research Award

Volker Hessel

doi:10.1515/gps-2013-0054

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Krishna Deo Prasad Nigam honored with Humboldt Research Award

Volker Hessel

Published/Copyright: July 31, 2013

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From the journal Green Processing and Synthesis Volume 2 Issue 4

Professor Krishna Deo Prasad Nigam of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi received the prestigious Humboldt Research Award, in a ceremony held at Bamberg, Germany on March 15, 2013. He is the first chemical engineer from India being awarded this way.

The Humboldt Research Award is a comprehensive honoring of a researcher’s academic performance with focus of having achieved fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights. These shall have demonstrated significant impact in the own field and are foreseen to have stimulated substantial predecessor cutting-edge research.

When released for the first time in the year 1972, the award was designated towards US scientists. Later, in the year 1982, it was granting researchers worldwide. The first award to an Indian researcher was given in 1994, thus 12 years of its global inception. Prof. Nigam is the first chemical engineer from India to receive this award.

© Photo: Humboldt Foundation/Albrecht Barthel

Prof. Nigam is very renowned internationally for his outstanding research in chemical process engineering. In particular, he contributed long lasting to the analysis and design of multiphase reactors. He was deeply involved in the design and commissioning of the first hydrocracker in India in December 2011. His group at I.I.T. Delhi was partner to the user industrial company, Indian Oil Corporation and the process engineering company Engineers India Limited. For the latter, Prof. Nigam has served as member of the Board of Directors.

Opposite to such world-scale engineering breakthrough, Prof. Nigam has developed a new device for process intensification, termed Coiled Flow Inverter. The strong recirculation flows therein can be utilized for multidisciplinary applications in process industry such as for inline mixing, chemical reactions, and heat and mass transfer. The research of Prof. Nigam links modern process modeling concepts to advanced experimental techniques. In such manner, he explored several promising possibilities for a cleaner and greener technology. Most prominent here is the extraction of heavy metals from spent catalyst generated from fertilizer and petroleum refinery industries. For all these reasons, many schools in Germany have expressed their interest to join hands to further explore his innovative device for different process engineering applications. Prof. Nigam actively promotes such dissemination and thus the creation of knowledge and its effective transfer to users is his cherished mission.

Prof. Nigam’s research is widely discussed and largely cited in prestigious journals and books such as the Proceedings of Royal Society London, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Perry’s Handbook etc. He was invited as Visiting Professor by many international schools in France, Germany, Australia, UK, USA, China, South Korea, and Mexico. He is Adjunct Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (2009–2012). He is member of the Editorial Boards of many journals including Chemical Engineering Research and Design, Chemical Engineering and Processing, Education for Chemical Engineers. He was twice Guest Editor for special issues of Chemical Engineering Science (2007 and 2011). Recently he has been appointed for the International Advisory Panel of Chemical Engineering Science (2012–2015). The journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research has honored him by a Festschrift issue – 51, 4 (2012) 1435–2178 – to recognize his achievements in chemical engineering. Last, but not least, Prof. Nigam serves on the Editorial Board of Green Processing and Synthesis and the journal and the publisher De Gruyter are very thankful for his contribution here.

Prof. Nigam creates a vital interface to bring environmental protection and economic development together in an ongoing era of globalization. He is a prime brick in the public-private partnership, which is receiving increased awareness worldwide – to foster, promote and sustain industrial commercialization, while not compromising its benefits to the society and environment.

Published Online: 2013-07-31

Published in Print: 2013-03-01

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/gps-2013-0054