Source: The Times of India | Image Courtesy: macfound

Another moment to gloat ourselves has arrived as Kartik Chandran, an Indian-American associate professor of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia Engineering, has been named a 2015 MacArthur with a “genius grant” of $625,000 with no strings attached.

Chandran who is a graduate from IIT-Roorkee has won the fellowship for his work in transforming wastewater from a pollutant requiring disposal to a resource for useful products, such as commodity chemicals, energy sources, and fertilizers.

He joined the Engineering School in 2005, has also won the Water Environment Research Foundation Paul L. Busch Award (2010), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2009), and a National Academies of Science Fellowship (2007).

He joins a distinguished group of 24 people who have all demonstrated exceptional originality and dedication to their creative pursuits, as well as a marked capacity for self-direction. The fellows may use the $625,000 stipend as they see fit.

Chandran was overwhelmed when he heard that he had been awarded a MacArthur fellowship. He had just returned to New York from India and couldn’t believe his ears. Chandran’s research on the global nitrogen cycle and engineered wastewater treatment has been widely recognised.

In 2011, he received a $1.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a transformative model for water and sanitation management in Africa.