ISUW 2024 Speaker

Dr. Anita is an alum of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi with Ph.D. in Engineering and also alum of MANIT Bhopal and NIT Raipur. She possesses over 25 years+ of professional experience in Management of various initiatives of Government of India on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Startups and Incubation at premier Technology Institutes with Pan India coverage. She has played a pivotal role in horizontal and vertical growth of incubators and tech based startups in the country, Dr. Anita has been a lead catalyst in establishing over 175 technology business incubators at various Institutions. She has been instrumental in carving out and implementing National Initiative for Developing & Harnessing Innovation (NIDHI) program by DST. As a rapid response to tackle pandemic of Covid, she rolled out a program CAWACH (Centre for Augmenting War on Covid19 Health Crisis) to scout and support indigenous solutions led by startups, enabling faster market deployment. She is currently heading Climate, Energy and Sustainable Technology Division in DST with focus on nurturing research and innovation for climate change adaptation and mitigation, decarbonization pathways, water technologies etc. The landscape of clean energy projects to steer Research, Development and Demonstration encompasses Solar Energy, Energy Storage, Hydrogen, Clean coal technologies, Methanol demo plants, Alternate fuels, Smart Grids, Building Energy Efficiency, Sustainable cooling and Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) technologies. Few Bilateral /Multilateral projects have also been initiated in Clean energy domain i.e. Solar Energy, Smart grids, Hydrogen and CCUS. She also represents India in the Global platform, Mission Innovation(MI) , where DST is the nodal department from GoI in MI.