Professor Abhijit Mukherjee, PhD (Hydrogeology) graduated from the University of Kentucky, USA (2006) and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin, USA (2006-2008). Previously, he also holds a MS (Hydrogeology, 2003) from the University of Kentucky, M.Sc. (Geology, 1999) from University of Calcutta, India and Masters Diploma in Software Engineering (2001). He served as the Physical Hydrogeologist at the Alberta Geological Survey in Canada (2008-2010). He is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and School of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur), India. He serves/has served in Editorial role in the Journal of Hydrology, Applied Geochemistry, Journal of Earth System Sciences, Scientific Reports. Prof. Mukherjee’s main research areas are physical, chemical and isotope hydrogeology, including numerical modeling, computation, contaminant transport, water policy applications. He is globally known for his studies on geological and human-sourced groundwater pollution (e.g. arsenic, fluoride, sanitation-borne and emerging contaminants) in more than a dozen countries. In India, this work has provided input to the government in understanding country’s drinking water and food security. He has also done extensive work on groundwater quantity and scarcity by understanding decadal-scale groundwater storage changes over the Indian subcontinent by using advanced computation and Artificial Intelligence techniques. The work has significantly contributed to support and evaluate the Government of India missions like MNREGA on groundwater rejuvenation in India.

For his work on groundwater, among several accolades, Prof. Mukherjee has been conferred the National Geoscience Award 2014 by the President of India in 2016, Kharaka Award in 2020 by International Association of Geochemist and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 2020.