Shyam. R Asolekar Dr. Shyam R. Asolekar is a Professor at the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He also served as the Head of the Department during May 2006 and June 2009. Dr Asolekar holds two degrees n chemical engineering: an undergraduate degree from Mumbai University's UICT (1980) and a master's degree from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (1985). Subsequently, he went to the U.S. to obtain his M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Syracuse University (1987) and University of Iowa (1991), respectively. After pursuing his postdoctoral studies at the Harvard University in Boston he returned to India in January 1993 to teach at the IIT Bombay.Dr Asolekar has been a member of the "Dahanu Taluka Environmental Protection Authority" (since 1997) as well as the "Expert Committee on Conversion of Municipal Solid Wastes to Energy" (since July 2005), both constituted by the Honorable Supreme Court of India. Recently, the Honorable Planning Commission of India has recruited him in the "Steering Committee on Environment, Forests & Wildlife" for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017). He was in the "Working Group on Rivers, Lakes and Aquifers" for the 11th Five Year Plan as well as the core group for mid-term assessment of plan-period 2007-2012. Recently, Dr Asolekar has been appointed as a core-team member for a project envisaged and conducted by the consortium of seven IITs entrusted with the responsibility of preparing Ganga River Basin Environment Management Plan (GRB-EMP) by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), GOI, New Delhi. The Govt of Maharashtra had appointed Prof Asolekar from 2007-2010 as an expert member in the "expert committee" entrusted with recommending clearance for the High-rise Buildings after investigating environmental suitability of the tower projects having more than 20 floors or taller than 70 meter of height. Earlier, under the Chairmanship of Dr Madhav Chitale, the Govt of Maharashtra had appointed Dr Asolekar in the "Fact-finding Committee" to probe the causes of the collapse of civic infrastructure in the aftermath of the deluge in Mumbai between July 26 and 29, 2005. Recently, Dr Asolekar has been inducted by the MoEF into the technical expert panel responsible for developing and implementing strategies for management of toxic and hazardous waste dump sites in India.His areas of research and industrial advice have been Treatment, Recycle and Reuse of Industrial and Municipal Wastewaters, Rejuvenation of Lakes, Rivers, and Polluted Coasts, Development of Technologies for Sustainable Futures, Environmental Policy, Preventive Environmental Management, Eco-industrial Networking, Global Environmental Issues, Treatment of Hazardous, Biomedical, and Solid Wastes, and Application of Remotely Sensed Data for Monitoring of Environmental Systems. Read More Read Less