Srinagar, Jan 5: Days after being elected as Fellow of the Indian Society of Geomatics, Kashmir University’s Dean of Research Prof Shakil A Romshoo has been elected as Fellow of the prestigious Indian Academy of Sciences. Prof Romshoo is the first Fellow of the Academy from Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh ever since its inception in 1934. The Academy, which plays a pivotal role in furthering the cause of science in India, has so far elected around 2000 top-notch scientists from within and outside the country as its Fellows. Founded by Nobel Laureate Professor C V Raman, the Indian Academy of Sciences is an autonomous institution under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. Congratulating Prof Romshoo on behalf of the university for this great achievement, KU Vice-Chancellor Prof Talat Ahmad said he was glad to see Prof Romshoo being recognised by the Indian Academy of Sciences for his profound and sustained contributions to the promotion of science in the country. “We all need to work together to raise the stature of science across the country and inculcate scientific temper amongst our youth,” Prof Talat said. Pertinently, Prof Romshoo has made remarkable contributions to the understanding of glacier systems of the sparsely instrumented Himalaya, and to the investigation of feedbacks between various environmental niches—from alpine glaciers to the depleting river flows in the Indus basin, which was a knowledge gap. His research has produced crucial information for choosing policy and management options for sustainable use of depleting water resources and for meeting the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) obligations, and to deal with impacts of climate change in the basin, the waters of which are shared between India and Pakistan. Prof Romshoo has demonstrated use of satellite data for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The knowledge outcomes from some of his research endeavours have fed into policymaking for disaster management, environmental management and climate change at the national level. Prof Romshoo has obtained Ph.D in Civil Engineering with a major in Microwave Remote Sensing from the University of Tokyo, Japan and MS in Space Technology from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok. With 32 years’ academic experience, he has worked, in the past, as a scientist at the Japan Space Agency Tokyo and Fellow at The Energy and Research Institute, Delhi. He has published 200 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and has mentored 19 Ph.D. students till date. He has independently handled scores of major research projects at Kashmir University and is a member of several policymaking committees and working groups on environment, water, climate change and disaster management at the UT, national and international level. Prof Romshoo is a recipient of a dozen national and international awards and has also been elected as Fellow of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing and, recently, the Indian Society of Geomatics too.
