Thinking outside the silos: Meet Ajay Kumar Sood, PSA to the Prime Minister

In his new job, Sood will have to complete a task his predecessor started: getting the government to sign off on a new Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP) on which work was begun in 2020

“What does he do in his spare time? I don’t think he has any spare time!” exclaimed Shankar Ghosh about Ajay Kumar Sood (71) who has just been appointed Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the Prime Minister, which makes him the go-to man for the government on all matters relating to science policy.

Ghosh teaches at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Sood was his PhD supervisor. Guru and shishya hold, among others, a joint US patent that is a “method for measurements of gas flow velocity, method for energy conversion using gas flow over solid material, and device thereof”.

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