Odisha-Born BARC Director Ajit Mohanty Appointed Atomic Energy Commission Chairman

New Delhi: The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) Director Ajit Kumar Mohanty as Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy and Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission.

He will hold the post up to the age of 66 years (10.10.2025) or until further orders, whichever is earlier, a notification issued by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Department of Personnel and Training said on Saturday.

Born in 1959 in Odisha, Mohanty was appointed as the 13th Director of BARC on March 12, 2019.

He completed his graduation in 1979 with Honours in Physics from MPC College, Baripada, and post-graduation in 1981 from the erstwhile Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. In 1983, Mohanty joined the Nuclear Physics Division, BARC, after graduating from the 26th Batch of BARC Training School. He obtained his doctorate from Mumbai University.

Mohanty worked in several areas of nuclear physics covering collision energy from the sub-Coulomb barrier to the relativistic regime using the Pelletron accelerator at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), PHENIX, and CMS experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA and CERN, Geneva.

He held several honorary positions at various organisations. He served the Indian Physics Association (IPA) as General Secretary and later as its President. He had been the spokesperson for India-CMS collaboration, Director, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, and Director, Physics Group, BARC. He has twice been the CERN Scientific Associate, first during 2002-2004 and again during 2010-2011.

Mohanty is a recipient of the Young Physicist Award from the Indian Physical Society in 1988, the Indian National Science Academy Young Scientist Award in 1991 and the Homi Bhabha Science and Technology Award of the Department of Atomic Energy in 2001. Recently, he was conferred with Honorary Doctrine of Literature (D.Litt.) Honoris Causa by the Utkal University, Bhubaneswar.