Dr. Ayon Kumar Tarafdar works as a Professor at the Department of Planning, and is presently also the Dean of Academics for SPA Vijayawada. As a Dean-Academics, he oversees, monitors and guides all the academic programmes offered at the campus. He had also served earlier as the Dean (Planning and Development) for the institution between 2019-20. He has also been the Head, Department of Planning at SPA Vijayawada for two terms. He has experience of over 22 years in research, industry and teaching (over 18 years excluding the time spent for acquiring his PhD).
Dr. Ayon completed his PhD degree from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway) in 2010, with the acclaimed full-time Norwegian Government Research Fellowship. His doctoral thesis focussed on understanding linkages between development practices and environmental impacts at a local level. He finished his Bachelors degree from SPA Delhi in 2000. He had his 'MS in Urban Ecological Planning' degree by 2002 from the Dept of Town and Regional Planning at NTNU, Norway with EU full-scholarship. After his MS, he worked for about five years as an urban planner and GIS analyst based out of Delhi, before starting hid PhD. During this period, he was also the Editor of the largest GIS portal of the world "Geospatial World" for one year. His professional practice in the field of planning includes projects and field experience in India, North America, UAE, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, and parts of Europe. He joined SPAV and academics full-time in 2009.
His research and works span the sub-domains of Resilience and Vulnerability Assessments, Climate-enabled Spatial Planning, Livelihoods analysis of the less-endowed, and Assessments of Carrying Capacities in Planning. He has over 35 publications with international journals and publishers (ISBN/ISSN), 6 book chapters, and 13 international conference presentations (see attached CV for details).
As an academic, he has delivered several special invited lectures and served as external jury member at IIT Kharagpur, IISc Banglore, SPA Delhi, CEPT University Ahmedabad, NIT Trichy, VNIT Nagpur, MANIT Bhopal, IIEST Shibpur, and SPA Bhopal. He has also been an Advisory Member to UPSC, Government of India, DST Govt of India, and was a Member of the National Educational Standing Committee of the Institute of Town Planners, India (ITPI), under MoUD, GoI. He has also been on advisory boards of State Govt on matters of recruitment and planning advocacy. He has conducted several workshops and training programmes and has been part of several international research projects (see attached CV for details).