Subhas Sikdar graduated with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1975, and after 41 years of service in various capacities, recently retired from the US Environmental Protection Agency, as the Associate Director for Science of the National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio. He worked for 10 years in industry, first for Occidental Research Corporation in Irvine, CA and then for General Electric Central R&D in Schenectady, NY. He started his Federal service with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) before moving to the Environmental Protection Agency’s research operation. All except the first four years of his career he was engaged in managing technical research until his retirement in 2016.
Subhas’s research career at OXY involved developing processes for phosphate fertilizers, and at GE, developing and managing process development of engineering thermoplastics. At NIST he was in charge of leading a group of scientists and engineers in various metrologies for engineering needs. At EPA he led development of technologies, methods, measurements, and models for environmental technologies that encompass the entire EPA business, first as a division director, then as the associate laboratory director. During the last 15 years at EPA he led the development of a research program on sustainability, and made personal contribution to measuring sustainability. Subhas has been elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Chemical Society (ACS), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE). He has won many awards from AIChE, EPA, University of Arizona, and University of Calcutta. He has published more than 100 technical papers, received 27 U.S. patents, and edited 15 books. He founded the NATO Pilot project for Clean Products and Processes, and organized 10 annual meetings at various European cities over 10 years. He also organized two Engineering Foundation Conferences in California in the 90’s on the same topic.
Subhas is the founder/Editor in Chief of the Springer journal, Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, which is now in its 18th year of publication. He is also a section editor of Encyclopedia of Sustainable Technologies to be published by Elsevier in 2017. Subhas Sikdar’s book, Measuring Progress towards Sustainability: a treatise for engineers will be published in September 2016 by Springer-Verlag.