DR A K PATRA
Dr. Ashok K. Patra did his early education at Bankura, West Bengal. He studied B. Sc. (Agri.) during 1979-1983 from Banaras Hindu University (Varanasi), and M. Sc. and Ph. D. in Soil Science & Agricultural Chemistry in 1985 and 1989, respectively, from IARI, New Delhi. He joined ARS (ICAR) in 1989 and started his career at IGFRI, Jhansi as a Scientist/Scientist Sr. Scale (1990-1998). Then as a Sr. Scientist he moved to CIFE, Mumbai (1998-1999), and to IARI, as Sr. Scientist (1999-2006) and Principal Scientist (2006-2014). Since May 2014 he is Director of the Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal.
During his scientific career, he has also worked as a postdoctoral scientist (1991-1993) at ICRISAT, Hyderabad, and under Indo-UK Collaborative programme a Visiting Study Fellow (1996) at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER), Devon, UK. He was a recipient of the prestigious INRA Fellowship (2001-2003) of the French Research Ministry to work on molecular soil ecology in N cycling at the CNRS-Claude Bernard Université Lyon, France.