Dr. Sudhir Jain is an active academic in Earthquake Engineering and a passionate academic administrator. He obtained a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Roorkee, and Masters and Doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. He has been on the faculty of IIT Kanpur since 1984, and is currently on leave to the new Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) in Ahmedabad to shoulder additional responsibilities of its first Director since June 2009.

He initiated Earthquake Engineering activities at IIT Kanpur in 1984. He set up and developed the National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE) at IITK. He also developed the National Programme on Earthquake Engineering Education (NPEEE), supported by the Government of India. He has carried out post-earthquake surveys of most of the disastrous earthquakes in India since 1988 and disseminated “Learnings From Earthquakes” through publications and seminars.

Dr. Jain has provided comprehensive earthquake engineering consultancy for major bridge projects, buried pipelines for petrochemicals, concrete dams, and the like to numerous organizations. He has contributed significantly to the development of Indian seismic codes, conducted numerous short courses and seminars on seismic design for practicing engineers and college teachers, which have been extremely popular in the country.

Dr. Jain was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering in 2000, and is currently its President – Elect. He was also on the Board of Directors of the World Seismic Safety Initiative from 2002 to 2009. He was elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering in the year 2003, and was conferred Life Membership by the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) in 2013.