Dr. Neeraj Saxena, is serving as Advisor-I and heading the Institutional Development Cell (IDC) of AICTE. He is on deputation from Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC), India's technology think-tank, where he has served for over 18 years.
Dr. Neeraj Saxena, is serving as Advisor-I and heading the Institutional Development Cell (IDC) of AICTE. He is on deputation from Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC), India's technology think-tank, where he has served for over 18 years.
As a part of the team implementing projects emerging out of Technology Vision 2020 (released by TIFAC in 1996), between 2000 and 2010, Dr. Saxena piloted the activities of Mission REACH (Relevance & Excellence in ACHieving new heights in educational institutions), a major initiative to reorient the higher science & technical education and make it ‘relevant’ to industries. He was instrumental in establishment of 35 TIFAC-Centres Of Relevance & Excellence (COREs) ever since this Mission got underway on October 4, 2000. The COREs as co-created entities strive for academic, research and technical excellence in an area that interests the user industries or organizations.
Dr. Saxena was selected by the Department of Science & Technology (DST) to undergo Executive Education Program on “Science, Technology & Innovation Policy” at the JF Kennedy School of Government at the Harvard University in 2006. He was trained in ‘Project Management for World Bank funded projects’ at the International Training Center of the ILO, in Turin (Italy) in 2008. He was part of the team that worked on Detailed Project Report for National Innovation Program (NIP) for India in 2008 and also Member-Secretary of the Working Group for “S&T in SMEs” for the 12th Five Year Plan (2007-2012) of the Govt. of India. He has been involved in preparation of the Detailed Project Report for National Mission on Inter-disciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) being launched by the DST.
Dr. Saxena got his doctoral degree in Physics for his work in the area of Acoustic Remote Sensing & its application to Air Pollution, carried out at the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi. He was involved in establishing country's first indigenous Doppler Sodar capable of remotely profiling wind and turbulence in the lower atmosphere.