Prof. P. N. Vinayachandran is the Chair of the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He obtained his MSc (Engineering) and PhD degrees from IISc and pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Tokyo. He also served as a Senior Researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). He is currently a professor of oceanography, with expertise spanning both field observations and numerical modelling of oceanic processes.
Prof. Vinayachandran’s research has made significant contributions to Indian Ocean science, particularly in the areas of ocean circulation and dynamics, air-sea interaction, and physical-biological interactions. He is a recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, J. C. Bose Fellowship, and fellowships of science academies in India. There are regions in the world’s oceans where dissolved oxygen concentrations fall below levels critical for sustaining marine life. In the Indian Ocean, both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal host oxygen minimum zones (OMZs). However, the Arabian Sea contains one of the most intense OMZs in the world.
During his Fulbright–Nehru Fellowship, Prof. Vinayachandran is planning to investigate the processes governing oceanic OMZs and their changes using long-term simulations with a coupled physical-biogeochemical ocean model.