Dr. Ayon Kumar Tarafdar works as a Professor at the Department of Planning, and also serves as the Dean of Academics for SPA Vijayawada, since 2022. As a Dean-Academics, he oversees, monitors and guides all the academic programmes offered at the campus. As Dean Academics, he was instrumental in bringing in NEP oriented Academic Ordinances, starting new programmes, and streamlining several processes of academic administration, exchange, and admissions in the campus. He had also served earlier as the Dean (Planning and Development) for the institution between 2019-20, during the final 2 years of new campus development and eventual inauguration and shifting into the new campus. 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.
Dr. Ayon finished his Bachelors degree from SPA Delhi in 2000 and completed his 'MS in Urban Ecological Planning' degree by 2002 from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway) with EU full-scholarship. After Masters, he worked for about five years as an urban planner and GIS analyst based out of Delhi, before starting his 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. Thereafter, Dr. Ayon started his full-time PhD degree from NTNU, Norway and finished the same in 2010, with the acclaimed full-time Norwegian Government Research Fellowship. His doctoral thesis in environmental planning focussed on understanding linkages between development practices and environmental impacts at a local level. He joined academics full-time at SPAV in 2009.
As an academic, he has delivered several special invited lectures and served as external jury member at University of Glouschesire UK, IISc Banglore, SPA Delhi, CEPT University Ahmedabad, IIT Kharagpur, NIT Trichy, VNIT Nagpur, MANIT Bhopal, IIEST Shibpur, and SPA Bhopal. He is a Senate member of SPA Bhopal and an Expert Advisory Member for Department of Physical Planning at SPA Delhi. 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 MoHUA, 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).
At present, he is the Head/Team Leader of the "Centre of Urban Planning for Capacity Building" which is a prestigious Centre funded by AMRUT MoHUA GoI since Oct 2024, wherein high-end cutting-edge research, capacity building and advisory is delivered by the Centre to LSGs in the region in the domain of Urban Planning and Climate Sensitive Development.
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).
