Avinash Vasant Khare earned his BSc from Vikram University and MSc from Indore University, Indore. In 1966, he joined Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata and worked in the Theoretical Nuclear Physics Division to obtain his PhD (1971) in high energy and elementary particle physics under the supervision of T Pradhan. He was a post-doctoral Fellow in the University of Tokyo, Japan (1973-74), and on returning to India, Khare joined as a Faculty member in the newly formed Institute of Physics (IOP) at Bhubaneswar (1975) where he is now a Senior Professor. He has collaborated with many leading scientists all over the world.

Academic and Research Achievements: Khare has taken a leading role in teaching and is known to be an excellent and inspiring teacher who has motivated a generation of graduate students in IOP. He has also taught in USA and Canada. Khare has also taken a leading role in carrying out research in different areas of theoretical physics. His work on Chern Simons vortices, supersymmetric quantum mechanics; ?6?-field theory and new identities for Jacobi elliptic functions is internationally well recognized and is highly cited. He has published more than 200 research papers in reputed refereed journals and written two books entitled Quantum Theory and Fractional Statistics and Supersymmetry in Quantum Mechanics. Khare has guide 6 students for their PhD degree.

Other Contributions: Along with few other faculty members, Avinash Khare played an important role in building IOP from scratch. He has served as an Editorial Board Member of Current Science and Pramana. He has also served as an INSA Council Member (2002-04).

Awards and Honours: Professor Khare is a recipient of Hari Om Trust Award of UGC (1998) and is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1991).