UNESCO Chair Established in UNESCO Madanjeet School of Green Energy Technologies,PU to promote green & clean Energy Technologies

UMSGET, Pondicherry University - 9th May 2024

The 16^th UNESCO Chair in India on “Renewable and Clean Energy for Sustainable Development” has been established in the Department of Green Energy Technology, UNESCO Madanjeet School of Green Energy Technologies at Pondicherry University.

The chair is to promote greener and cleaner energy technologies (solar, wind, biomass, hydro, ocean, green hydrogen, etc.) to mitigate the global issues such as climate change, global warming, environmental pollution, and energy crisis for sustainable development. SAF India welcomes the UNESCO chairholder, Prof. Ramaswamy Arun Prasath, Head of the Department of Green Energy Technology and Director, UNESCO Madanjeet School of Green Energy Technologies (UMSGET) of South Asia Foundation, Indian Chapter. Professor R. Arun Prasath brings vast international (Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, and the USA) exposure as a researcher and received prestigious awards like DAAD, BOF and RAMAN Fellow. He heads the department and leads a research group on material development for green energy conversion and storage to promote energy sustainability. The collaboration between SAF and UNESCO certainly reflects SAF’s strong commitment to providing intellectual knowledge and professional training to promote renewable energy in South Asia and globally for sustainable development for the active progress of the UNESCO Chair on “Renewable and Clean Energy for Sustainable Development”. The chair advocates for a rapid and massive transformation toward renewable energy to address global climate change issues and promote sustainability in energy generation and use. Yet another acknowledgment

Professor Ramaswamy Arun Prasath, UNESCO Chair, DGET, MSGET, Pondicherry University.

About UNESCO Chair

R. Arun Prasath is a Professor and head of the Department of Green Energy Technology at Pondicherry University. He received the prestigious DAAD fellowship (1999-2001) for his doctoral research work at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, GERMANY. He worked as a material researcher in several prestigious institutes, as a research associate at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, INDIA (2002-2004), a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UNITED KINGDOM (2004-2006) and at University of New South Wales, Sydney, AUSTRALIA (2006-2008), and as a senior researcher in Ghent University (2008-2010), BELGIUM with special fellowship named BOF and received the prestigious RAMAN fellowship to work at University of Wyoming, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in the year 2014-15. Currently, he is leading a research group on energy materials and sustainability. He extensively focuses on materials synthesis, characterization, and application in solar energy, bio-energy, batteries, fuel cells, and other green and clean energy technologies. He has authored over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, proceedings, and book chapters and is a co-inventor in 3 International patents and 2 European patent applications to his credit. He has presented more than 80 oral presentations at various conferences, seminars, courses, and invited talks, mainly on research progress and outreach on renewable energy technologies. He was involved as PI/Co-PI in projects funded by DST-SERB, MNRE, and ICSSR. He has guided several students on their PG degree projects, and some Ph.D. students have obtained their doctoral degrees under his guidance on material development for solar cells, bio-energy, battery, and fuel cells. He serves as an executive council member for the Energy Science Society of India, a founding member of ANGIRAS -Network of Indian Alumni from German Universities for Sustainable Solutions, and a member of the Indian Society of Geomatics (ISG) - Pondicherry Chapter. He has more than 22 years of teaching and research activity, -including industrial research. He also serves as chairman of green audit for Pondicherry University campus and as a member of QS Sustainability Ranking and Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the campus to the SDGs-7 goal of "affordable and clean energy." In addtion, he is member of several university administration activities that promote sustainability. He is actively involved in outreach and promotion of solar energy technologies;- his team project proposal on Pondicherry University for a solar campus in 2012 has contributed to promoting Solar Energy on the campus with a current installed capacity of 2.4 MWp in 2021, -making it one of the largest affordable and clean energy generation in an educational institution in India which caters to ~30% of the current University's energy requirement and helps offset several thousand tons of carbon emission annually. He organizes seminars, training programs, workshops, and conferences to promote green energy technologies for sustainable development.