Ram has completed his MSc and PhD in aquaculture from AIT and has post-doc work experience with the University of Stirling, Scotland UK and Montpellier University III, France. He is founding Director of Aqua-Centre and Research Associate Professor at AIT. He has over 20 years of experience with AIT.
His career started as Research Associate right after his MSc degree working with a joint venture project launched for the transfer of tilapia hatchery technology to private sector. A private company, named Nam Sai Farm in Thailand which was established with the purpose of supplying monosex tilapia fry which is produced using a technique of converting females into fast-growing males. He also did all his PhD research at the same farm which expanded to several branches within Thailand and other countries such as Bangladesh. The farm has now become one of the largest and technically advanced tilapia hatcheries in the world. Ram has trained over 600 senior officials of government and NGOs, senior executives of private companies and other professionals from all over the world.
Ram has also designed and implemented several other projects in many countries to address the issues of food and nutrition security, low income and unemployment. He has been successful in winning several competitive projects e.g. curriculum development projects funded by EU and others. Currently, he is the Team Leader of “Curriculum Development for Sustainable Seafood and Nutrition Security (SSNS) co-funded by EU Erasmus+ programme which involves over 50 lecturers from 13 University partners in Greece, UK, Norway, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam. Other projects include women in aquaculture in Nepal, entrepreneurship in women in Myanmar among others.
He has received a Gold Award by Asian Fisheries Society (AFS), Award from ICN International Media Group, and Fellow Award by the Society for Agriculture Innovation and Development (India) for his contribution in the sector.
He is the sole author of the popular tilapia book entitled, “A Manual for Tilapia Business Management” which has been written based on his experience which is available online including eBay and Amazon.com and so on, such as: https://www.cabi.org/bookshop/book/9781780641362/
He will describe the technologies developed by AIT that include mass scale production of monosex fry, hapa nursing, and green water pond and cage culture systems along with others growout system such as Aquaponics, Biofloc and IPRS (In-pond raceway systems) models of tilapia grow-out farming ranging from large commercial scale to backyard gardening for family food and nutrition security which are important especially in the context of COVID19.
