M. Jagadesh Kumar
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar is an Indian academic, electrical engineer and education administrator. He is the former Chairman of University Grants Commission, serving from February 2022 to April 2025. He served as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Delhi. Kumar was the Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University from January 2016 till 2022.
Life, education and career
Kumar was born in Mamidala village in Tipparthi mandal, Nalgonda district, Telangana. He did his Masters and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, followed by post doctoral research at University of Waterloo, Canada. He works in the area of nanoscience and nanotechnology. He is currently a fellow at Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Academy of Engineering among others. He is Chairman of the governing body of National Council of Science Museums. He has received the "ISA-VSI TechnoMentor Award", with the award being presented by Dr. R. Chidambaram.He was selected as the Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University from among four others including Rameshwar Nath Koul Bamezai, Virander Singh Chauhan and Ramakrishna Ramaswamy.
During his tenure as VC, he has often been in the news for many controversies happening on his watch such as the 2016 JNU sedition row, the disappearance of a student Najeeb Ahmad and the 2020 JNU attacks. Critics say that he is "implementing the agenda of the RSS", the reason why he has been made VC in the first place. JNU Students' Unions called for his resignation following the attacks on JNU in January 2020.