HYDERABAD: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Vice-Chancellor Prof Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, who hails from Mamidala in Tipparthi mandal in Nalgonda district, has been appointed the new chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) for a five-year term.
An IIT Madras alumnus, Prof Kumar’s term as JNU Vice-Chancellor ended on January 26, but he was asked to continue till a replacement was appointed. The UGC chairman’s post has been lying vacant since December last year after Prof DP Singh resigned after turning 65. Though he was Vice-Chancellor of JNU, Prof Kumar worked as professor at IIT, Delhi.
The appointment orders, issued on Friday, said that his term will begin from the date of assumption of charge, or till he attains the age of 65 years, or until further orders.Born in Mamidala, Prof Kumar obtained his MS (EE) and PhD (EE) degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras.
Prof Jagadeesh Kumar did his post-doctoral research at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He had previously worked as an assistant professor at IIT Kharagpur and Associate Professor at IIT Delhi. He has worked in nanoelectronic devices, nanoscale device modeling and simulation, innovative device design, and power semiconductor devices.
Prof Jagadesh Kumar’s tenure in JNU was marked by constant campus unrest over various issues ranging from the 2016 sedition controversy to the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed, an MSc student. He was locked in his office multiple times by agitating JNU students. In JNU, he tried to bring discipline by making attendence compulsory