National Centre for Earth Science Studies

Dr. V Nandakumar, Head of the Crustal Dynamics Group and Scientist G in the National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS), took charge as the Director (Additional Charge) of the institute on 25/09/2023. He is a member of the Governing body of NCESS and Member Secretary of the present Research Advisory Committee (RAC), in addition to serving as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Geochronology Facility of IUAC, New Delhi. He served as Director (Additional Charge) of NCESS for a few months in the year 2020.

He focuses his research on different aspects of the Earth Science and its applications, including hydrocarbon fluid inclusions, origin and evolution of granulite rocks of Western Ghats, landslides, and other natural hazards. He served as the Head of the Crustal Processes Group NCESS for quite a long time till he joined as the Head of Crustal Dynamic Group in 2021. He was instrumental in developing most of the recent sophisticated, state-of-the-art facilities for solid earth research in NCESS. XRF, MC-ICPMS, and EPMA are a few of them that could be mentioned in this regard. He has authored a book titled “Hydrocarbon Fluid Inclusions in Petroliferous Basins” published by Elsevier, United States (ISBN: 9780128174166). Additionally, he has published many research papers in peer-reviewed national and international journals. His pioneering work published in the Journal of Petrology on “Petrochronology” using datable mineral domains like zircon and monazites supported by microanalytical techniques helped to elucidate the crustal evolution history and orogenic record locked up in mineral textures at thin section level. His work on the granulite facies of rocks provided new insights into deep crustal processes, melt movements during high-grade metamorphism, and regional tectonism associated with global supercontinent assembly in the southern Indian shield. For his research in hydrocarbon fluid inclusion, he was granted an Indian patent for the invention entitled “Method of detecting API gravity of oil present in hydrocarbon bearing fluid inclusions” (Patent No. 315456) in the year 2019. He also had successfully carried out projects with immense societal applications, such as slope stability, landslide studies, watershed evaluation, and management. He also formulated a project to correlate the magmatism, metamorphism, and crustal architecture of the Gondwana counterparts of the Eastern Ghats with that of Princes Elizabeth Land of Antarctica.

He is a life member of many professional and academic bodies of repute, such as the Geological Society of India, Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Mineralogical Society of America, Geological Society of America, Soil Conservation Society of India, and Ocean Society of India. He has represented NCESS in several national and international conferences and visited the USA, UK, Japan, and France. He is at present collaborating with the University of Kerala and Centre for Earth Sciences, IISc, and the School of Geo-Sciences University of Edinburgh, UK. He was awarded British Royal Society-INSA fellowships for higher research in the UK twice (1998 and 2010), where he performed advanced research at the University of Edinburgh. He has collaborated with world-renowned scientists and brought out several benchmark papers, many of which are published in peer-reviewed international journals, including the Journal of Petrology, Journal of Geology, Gondwana Research, Precambrian Research, Lithos, Energy & Fuels, Petroleum Geoscience, and Chemosphere. Dr. Nandakumar was awarded the Certificate of Merit for his outstanding contributions to the field of Geosciences by MoES in 2015.