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Amitav Rath
Technical Director for Research
Amitav has an interdisciplinary background that combines research and policy on applied climate science and engineering. He has spent his 40 years long professional career crossing the bridge between policy decision-making and scientific applications on climate change, air pollution and environmental assessment.
During the 70´s he was Director of the Management Development Institute in New Delhi, the main national institute for management of scientific training, consulting and research. Responsible for catering and shaping capacity building, technology transfer and training programs to millions of Government officials and the private sector in India.
He later spent more than a decade as Director of the International Development Research Center (IDRC), leading The Canadian development agency investing in knowledge, innovation, and solutions to improve the lives of people in the developing world. He was responsible for formulating grants, funding, and awards to researchers and institutions to find solutions for global development challenges strengthening decision-making and scaling-up effective actions to improve the livelihoods of vulnerable countries.
Over the last decade he has acted as Director for Analysis with OIKO, leading the area of work to advise governments and international organizations on technology transfer, climate change, renewable energy and sustainable development in over forty countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
He is a confident advisor to CIDA, IDRC, WB, ADB, IADB, OAS, UNDP, UNIDO, the UN Multilateral Fund for the Montreal Protocol, UNEP, the Commonwealth Secretariat, DfID, GIZ, Sida, the International Energy Agency.
He received his Bachelor’s degree in Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he has, since 2010 also been Professor of Interdisciplinary studies in Energy and Climate Change. He holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Operations Research at the University of California, Berkley.
He lectures on the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI), Tshwane University, Pretoria, South Africa, where he is a Research Fellow and Professor Extraordinaire since 2008. An Associate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Winnipeg and visiting professor at several universities, Carleton University, Ottawa and University of Lund, Sweden; and the University of West Indies, Jamaica.