Prof Rajat Moona has been appointed as the Director of the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) after the President of India cleared his appointment. Moona, currently heading IIT Bhilai as Director for over five years, is likely to join IITGN in a couple of weeks, an official statement said.

Moona will take the charge from Prof Amit Prashant, who is heading the Institute as the Officiating Director, after Prof Sudhir Jain was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University in January this year. Prior to joining IIT Bhilai, he served as Director General of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). He is also a faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur since 1991.

On his appointment, Moona said, “I am excited to join IIT Gandhinagar, which has been charting new benchmarks in multiple spheres for over a decade. Together with the able team of my colleagues at IITGN, we will script a new growth journey for the Institute.”

A BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur (1981-1985) and a PhD in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore (1985-1989). Moona has been an exceptional academician and administrator. He was also instrumental in defining some of the key applications for the country, such as smart card driving license, vehicle registration, e-passport, electronic toll collection, EVMs and VVPAT, among others.