Keynote Address

Exploring New Horizons of Environmental and Health Sciences and Advancing Them Through Modern Human Approaches

Professor (Dr.) Padma Kant Shukla, CorrFRSE, FInstP, FAPS, AFTWAS
Foreign Member Physics Class of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
and Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

Prof. Padma K Shukla is a world renowned plasma physicist, with wide ranging research interest in multidisciplinary sciences including basic and nonlinear physics, nonlinear geophysical flows, atmospheric physics and environmental sciences etc.. He was born in the village Tulapur, Uttar Pradesh (UP), India and was educated there. After his Ph.D. in Physics from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, he obtained his second doctorate degree in Theoretical Plasma Physics from Ume°a University. He has worked in the Faculty of Physics & Astronomy, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany since January 1973, where he is a permanent faculty member.

He is the discoverer of the dust acoustic wave. He is a co-organizer (since 1989) of the plasma physics activities (Summer Colleges and Workshops in Plasma Physics) at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste (Italy), Chairman of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the International Conference on Physics of Dusty Plasmas (ICPDP), and IAC member of the International Congress on Plasma Physics (ICPP). He has significantly contributed to education as well as to the development of basic and applied physics worldwide; specifically, in many developing countries across the globe. Professor Shukla is also serving as Chairman of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics C.16 Commission on Plasma Physics, as Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Emerging Nations Science Foundation (Trieste), as Editor-in-Chief of J. Plasma Physics (Cambridge University Press, UK), and as Editorial Board Member of New J. Physics (Institute of Physics, UK). He also holds visiting professorships at the Department of Physics, Ume°a University, Sweden and at the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland (UK), as well as a full professorship at GoLP/Centre for Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion, IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, an honorary professorship at the School of Physics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, a distinguished adjunct professorship at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan, and an adjunct professorship at National Physics Centre, Islamabad, Pakistan. He has honorary doctorates from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow and the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. He is Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), and Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK), a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an Associate Member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (Trieste, Italy). Professor Shukla has been awarded the highly reputed 2005 American Physical Society Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach, and is recipient of the prestigious 2006 Gay-Lussac/Humboldt Prize from the French Ministry of Education and Research. He is the First Laureate of the 22nd Khwarizmi International Award from the IROST, Iran.

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation