M. K. Chaudhuri, born on 21 July 1947 in the northeast Indian state of Assam, obtained a master's degree from Kalyani University before securing his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1973. Moving to Germany, he completed Dr rer. net. from Ruhr University Bochum in 1975 and returned to India to join the North Eastern Hill University as a professor at the department of chemistry. Later, he moved to the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati as the head of the chemistry department where he served as the dean of student affairs as well as the dean of research and development. In May 2007, he was appointed as the vice chancellor of Tezpur University. On completion of his five-year term, he was reappointed as the vice chancellor in 2012 and held the position until May, 2017. Chaudhuri's researches have been focused on the synthesis of dioxygen complexes and fluorine compounds of metals and non-metals. He has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and Indian Academy of Sciences have listed 88 of them in their online repository. Under his leadership, Tezpur University have developed into a major centre of learning in India and received the Visitor's Award for the Best University from the President of India in 2016. He has been associated with the Department of Science and Technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the University Grants Commission of India as well as the state and union government bodies as an expert committee member and has organized many refresher courses and seminars at the university and outside. He was also a member of the Indo-US Higher Education Dialogue of 2014 and the Inspire program on Mathematics of the Department of Science and Technology.
Awards and honors
The Indian Academy of Sciences elected him as their fellow in 1988 and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1989. He became an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 1991 and received P. Natrajan Endowment Award in 1998. He is also a recipient of the Chemito Award and S. S. Sandhu Award of Indian Chemical Society. In 2017 he received honorary D.Sc degree from Kalyani University and University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya.
