Topic: Rajendra Pachauri

Rajendra Kumar Pachauri (born August 20, 1940) has served as the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, during which his tenure has engendered controversy. He is also been director general of TERI, a research and policy organization in India, and chancellor of TERI University. He has also been the chairman of the governing council of the National Agro Foundation (NAF), as well as the chairman of the board of Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society. Pachauri has been outspoken about climate change. He is now serving as the head of Yale's Climate and Energy Institute (YCEI).

At the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony when the award was shared between Al Gore and the IPCC on December 10, 2007, Pachauri represented the IPCC.

Pachauri was born in Nainital, India. He was educated at La Martiniere College in Lucknow and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Jamalpur, Bihar. He belongs to the Special Class Railway Apprentices, 1958 Batch, an elite scheme which heralded the beginning of mechanical engineering education in India.. He began his career with the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi. Pachauri was awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974. He lives in Golf Links, New Delhi. He is a strict vegetarian, partly due to his beliefs as a Hindu, and partly because of the impact of meat-production on the environment.