New Delhi: Ajay Sood, a Panjab University alumni, presently then honorary professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru's Department of Physics, has been named the Prime Minister's new Principal Scientific Adviser, it was announced on Wednesday.

K. Vijaya Raghavan, who recently retired, is replaced by Sood. "Professor Ajay Sood of IISC Bangalore has been appointed as the Principal Scientific Adviser, and we extend our warmest congratulations and best wishes to him. He has all of the resources he needs to guide science and technology in these turbulent times (sic) "Vijaya Raghavan posted a tweet. "Have admired Ajay for decades for being a scholar with outstanding intellect, perfect ethics, and huge international repute. (sic)" tweeted another of his contemporaries, former DG, CSIR Raghunath Mashelkar.

In 2013, Sood received the Padma Shri award for his outstanding contributions to science. Sood received his MS in Physics from Panjab University in Chandigarh in 1972 and his PhD in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru in 1982. Sood worked as a scientist at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, India, after being a postdoctoral Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for FKF in Stuttgart, Germany, between 1983 and 1985. Since 1993, he has been an honorary professor at Bangalore's Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research.

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