NEW DELHI, Nov 22: IIT-Guwahati Director TG Sitharam has been appointed new chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the Ministry of Education said on Tuesday.
He will serve as the head of technical education regulator for three years.
Sitharam succeeds University Grants Commission Chairman Jagadesh Kumar who was holding interim charge of the top post for the technical education regulator after Anil Sahasrabuddhe superannuated on September 1, 2021 upon turning 65.
“The Central Government hereby appoints, Prof. T.G. Sitharam, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, as Chairman, AICTE for a period of three years from the date of assumption of charge, or till attaining the age of 65 years or until further orders, whichever is earliest,” the MoE said in an official notification.
Sitharam took over as the director of IIT-Guwahati in July, 2019.
Prior to that, he was a professor at the department of civil engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, after a stint as the chair professor in the energy and mechanical sciences at the institute.
He served at the IISc for around 27 years.
His appointment comes at a time the Ministry of Education is putting final touches to a bill that intends to merge the AICTE and the University Grants Commission into a super regulator called the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI).
Sitharam was also the founder-chairman of the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and Urban Planning (CiSTUP) at IISc, Bengaluru.
Presently, he is the Honorary Professorial Fellow at University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia (2019-2022) and Distinguished professor at the Hankou University International Innovation Centre, China.
He is also the Chairman of Research Council, CSIR-Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), Roorkee.
He also holds several other posts including Chairman, Executive Council of Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum Bangalore India; Governing Council member of the National Council for Science Museums (NCSM and EC member of AICTE.
Sitharam obtained PhD in Civil Engineering from University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (1991).
He has also served as a Research Scientist (for his post-doctoral work) at the Centre for Earth Sciences and Engineering in the Department of Petroleum Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA till 1994. (PTI)
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