Dr Elena Dieckmann and Professor Sanjeev Gupta have accepted the appointment of Academic Co-Director for Imperial Global India, with effect from 1 March 2025 for a term of three years. This is a 0.2 FTE role.
Reporting to the Vice-President (Strategic Engagement), the Academic Co-Directors will provide strategic vision, direction and leadership to the hub.
Dr Dieckmann has been a Lecturer in the Dyson School of Design Engineering since 2023, following the completion of both her Master’s degree and PhD at Imperial. Dr Dieckmann is the Director of the Cleantech Innovation MSc and previously held the role of Second Year Lead for the Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, a joint programme with the Royal College of Art.
Her main research interests are in circular economy, waste resource conversion, deeptech translation and sustainable manufacturing. Elena collaborates on sustainability-focused research projects with the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) in Bengaluru.
Professor Gupta joined Imperial in 1999 as Lecturer and was promoted to Professor of Earth Science in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering in 2010. Professor Gupta is an Earth and planetary scientist with research interests in planetary surface processes. He has worked extensively in India on the role of rivers in early civilisations in the Ganga basin, and quantifying groundwater depletion, with researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He currently works on Mars exploration and is on the science teams for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity and M2020 Perseverance rover missions.
Sanjeev holds a number of senior advisory roles in the UK, including chair of the UK Space Agency Robotic Exploration Oversight Committee.