Dr. Ankur Awadhiya (b. 1987) is an IFS officer of 2014 batch borne on the Madhya Pradesh cadre. Trained as an engineer, he earned his B. Tech in Biological Sciences and Bioengineering in 2009 from IIT Kanpur, followed by a Ph.D from IIT Kanpur in 2015, AIGNFA (Honours Diploma) from the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy in 2016 and Post Graduate Diploma in Advanced Wildlife Management (Honours Diploma) from the Wildlife Institute of India in 2018. He has studied Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science from Harvard, Data, Economics and Development Policy from MIT and Remote Sensing from the University of Alaska. He maintains a keen interest in biodiversity conservation, forest management, and research, and is a prolific writer with over 50 publications and 2 patents. He has been a recipient of several honors including the NTSE scholarship, KVPY fellowship, Vanyaprani Sanrakshan Puraskar, Shri P. Srinivas Memorial prize, K. P. Sagriya Shreshta Vaniki Puraskar, and the S. K. Seth Prize. Besides academics and research, he maintains a passion towards teaching, photography, painting, movie-making, and creative literary pursuits.
