Amit Kumar

Professor Amit Kumar is an academic research professional with extensive experience in urban-environmental interactions, natural hazard-risk and Earth Observation/Remote Sensing. His research focuses on understanding the geographical dynamics and ecological impacts of climate change and disaster risks across urban and forest ecosystems, with the aim of developing data-driven, climate-resilient solutions.

He is engaged with various research and development projects including state-of-the-art Long-Term Ecological Observatories (LTEO) projects under the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC), as well as high-impact projects like the NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR), DBT Forest inventory, GISAT missions and Airborne Hyperspectral Sensing missions for vegetation monitoring and disaster resilience. He has supervised 04 PhD Scholars, 61 PG dissertations, published 03 books and 110+ research articles in various journals and books of international and national repute, including Nature Ecology and Evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Science of The Total Environment, and CITIES. His book, Earth Observation for Urban Monitoring, is a key resource in the field, providing practical and research-based insights into urban environmental monitoring. He has >2400 citations, with H-index of 29, and i-10 index of 57.

Presently, he is affiliated to Purdue University as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar (FNAPE) at the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources (FNR) and working on green cover dynamics at global scale coupling large sets of in-situ and Earth Observation/Remote Sensing observations. He also serves as a Professor (Full) in the Department of Geography, Institute of Science at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, Bharat (INDIA). Previously, he served at Sikkim University (Gangtok) as a Professor (Full) and at Central University of Jharkhand (Ranchi), INDIA as an Assistant Professor. He is a member of various academic societies including IUCN-Commission on Ecosystem Management (South Asia), American Geophysical Union (AGU), National Association of Geographers-India (NAGI), Global Forest Biodiversity Initiatives (GFBI), USA, Indian Society of Geomatics-Ahmedabad etc. He is the recipient of several international and national awards including the Fulbright Nehru fellowship for academic and professional excellence (2023-2024), Prof. B. Hema Malini Eminent Geographer's Award (NAGI), Postdoctoral Travel Award (Purdue University) and SERB-ITSS, and the Young Scientists Award. Also, he is a Fellow from SSCE (New Delhi).