Dr. Ajay Dalai obtained his B.Tech degree in 1982 from LIT Nagpur and M.Tech degree in 1984 in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kanpur and his PhD degree in 1989 from the University of Saskatchewan. He began his career with the University of Saskatchewan in 1996 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, with promotions to Associate
Professor in 1998 and to Full Professor in 2002. In 2001, he was awarded a position of Canada Research Chair in Bioenergy and Environmentally Friendly Chemical Processing, which he continues today. In 2007, Dr. Dalai was appointed as Head of Chemical Engineering and in 2009, he was
appointed as Associate Dean of Research and Partnerships for the College of Engineering for a period of five years. In 2012-2013, he served as Special Advisor on Energy and Minerals research theme to the Vice President Research at the University of Saskatchewan. In January 2020, Professor Dalai was appointed as a Distinguished Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Dalai is an active board member, reviewer, and guest editor for several international journals.. He is honoured as a Fellow of
the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada, Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada, Fellow of American Institute of Chemical Engineers and Fellow of Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, Fellow of Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of Royal Society of
Chemistry (UK), a USA Fulbright Fellow, a DAAD Fellow and JSPS Fellow, Most recently, he gave seminars at the Universities of Edinburgh, University of Aberdeen, Harriot-Watt University, Imperial College and Cambridge University as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering fellowship in UK.
Research: His research focus is the novel catalyst development for gas to liquid (GTL) technologies, biomass utilization, biodiesel production and applications, hydrogen/syngas production from waste materials, hydroprocessing of heavy gas oil, and value-added products from biomass, and production and applications of activated carbon and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Over the past two years, Professor Dalai is actively pursuing on projects related to the utilization of micro-algae for fuels and value-added
bio-products. He is a lead user of synchrotron radiation facility at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Dalai has filed several patent applications and has published over 490 research papers in international journals and conference proceedings and books, mostly on heterogeneous catalysis and catalytic and green processes, with citations over 23,000 and H-index of 73.