Biography
Before joining IISER Berhampur, Dr. Malakar served as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geological Sciences, Jadavpur University, for three years (2022–2025), where he taught Hydrogeology, Remote Sensing & GIS, and Environmental Geology at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Malakar worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Alabama, USA (2021–2022), where he integrated big hydrological datasets to understand groundwater recharge and drought susceptibility in the United States.
Dr. Malakar’s academic journey began with a B.Sc. from the Department of Geological Sciences at Jadavpur University. He then pursued his M.Sc. from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Dr. Malakar earned his Ph.D. in Hydrogeology from the Indian Institute of
Technology Kharagpur in 2021. His doctoral research focused on the natural and human-induced impact on groundwater resources and their implications for crop yield and drinking water supply. He developed novel data-driven models to asses and forecast groundwater levels, understand recharge/storage mechanisms, and identify influences on groundwater depletion. His Ph.D. research was supervised by Prof. Abhijit
Mukherjee (Department of Geology And Geophysics, IITKGP) and Prof. Sudeshna Sarkar (Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT KGP).
Dr. Malakar has led and participated in multiple research projects funded
by national and international agencies. He is currently the Principal
Investigator of an ANRF-DST-funded project that investigates the
influence of climate variability/change and human activities on depth-dependent groundwater
recharge in semi-arid regions of India. This project employs a combination of
chemical, physical, and AI-based modeling techniques to improve groundwater
sustainability assessments.
- Malakar, P*., Anshuman, A., Kumar, M., Boumis, G., Clement, T. P., Tashie, A., ... & Rathore, L. (2025). An in-situ daily dataset for benchmarking temporal variability of groundwater recharge. Earth System Science Data (accepted)
- Malakar, P.*, Bhanja, S.N., Dash, A.A., Saha, D., Ray, R.K., Sarkar, S., Zahid, A. and Mukherjee, A. (2022): Delineating Variabilities of Groundwater Level Prediction Across the Agriculturally Intensive Transboundary Aquifers of South Asia. ACS ES&T Water, 3(6), 1547-1560.
- Malakar, P.*, Mukherjee, A., Bhanja, S. N., Ganguly, A. R., Ray, R.K., Zahid, A., Sarkar, S., Saha, D., Chattopadhyay, S. (2021): Three decades of depth-dependent groundwater response to climate variability and human regime in the transboundary Indus-Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna mega river basin aquifers. Advances in Water Resources, 149, 103856.
- Malakar, P.*, Mukherjee, A., Bhanja, S. N., Sarkar, S., Saha, D., & Ray, R. K. (2021): Deep Learning-Based Forecasting of Groundwater Level Trends in India: Implications for Crop Production and Drinking Water Supply. ACS ES&T Engineering, 1, 965–977.
- Malakar, P., Mukherjee, A., Bhanja, S. N., Ray, R. K., Sarkar, S., & Zahid, A. (2021): Machine-learning-based regional-scale groundwater level prediction using GRACE. Hydrogeology Journal, 29, 1027–1042.
- Malakar, P*., Mukherjee, A., Bhanja, S. N., Saha, D., Ray, R. K., Sarkar, S., & Zahid, A. (2020): Importance of spatial and depth-dependent drivers in groundwater level modeling through machine learning. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 1-22.
- Bhanja, S. N., Malakar, P., Mukherjee, A., Rodell, M., Mitra, P., & Sarkar, S. (2019): Using Satellite‐Based Vegetation Cover as Indicator of Groundwater Storage in Natural Vegetation Areas. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(14), 8082-8092.
- Aind, D. A., Malakar, P., Sarkar, S., & Mukherjee, A. (2022). Controls on Groundwater Fluoride Contamination in Eastern Parts of India: Insights from Unsaturated Zone Fluoride Profiles and AI-Based Modeling. Water, 14(20), 3220.
- Deb, P., Malakar, P., Bora, P. K., & Dubey, S. K. (2024). Univariate versus multivariate flood frequency analysis in tropical region: Employing two classes of hydrological models. CLEAN–Soil, Air, Water, 2300351.
- Das, K., Mukherjee, A., Malakar, P., Das, P., Dey, U. (2021): Impact of global-scale hydroclimatic changes on drinking water quality variability and processes of multi-depth aquifers of the Ganges river delta front of Sundarbans. Science of the Total Environment, 798.
- Bhanja, S. N., Mukherjee, A., Rangarajan, R., Scanlon, B. R., Malakar, P., & Verma, S. (2019): Long-term groundwater recharge rates across India by in situ measurements. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. 23(2), 711-722.
- Mukherjee, A., Bhanja, S. N., Rodell, M., Wada, Y., Malakar, P., Saha, D., & MacDonald, A. M. (2023). Contesting with the Ganges Water Machine in South Asia: Theory versus Reality. ACS ES&T Water, 3(3), 626-628.
- Duttagupta, S., Bhattacharya, A., Mukherjee, A., Chattopadhyay, S., Bhanja, S. N., Sarkar, S., Malakar, P., & Bhattacharya, J. (2019): Groundwater faecal pollution observation in parts of Indo-Ganges–Brahmaputra river basin from in-situ measurements and satellite-based observations. Journal of Earth System Science, 128(3), 44.
Climate variability and human influence on depth-dependent groundwater recharge in semi-arid western parts of West Bengal using chemical, physical, and AI-based modeling by ANRF (2023-26)
Impacts of anthropogenic and climatic changes on coastal groundwater in Eastern India by IISER Berhampur (2025-28)
- Impact of climate variability/change and human influence on groundwater
- Groundwater recharge and storage quantification; and process understanding
- Machine learning and deep learning-based applications for predicting groundwater
- Coastal groundwater
- Socioeconomic groundwater
- Ph.D. advisee: 1. Mr. Debabrata Mondal (MSc: Kazi Nazrul University, ongoing, Institute Funded); 2. Mr. Biswajit Nandi (MSc: IIT Bombay, ongoing, CSIR Funded); 3. Mr. Ashish Kumar Sahoo (MSc: IIT Bhubaneswar, ongoing, Institute Funded); 4. Mr. Sameer Kumar Mahankuda (MSc: IIT Kharagpur, ongoing, CSIR Funded)
- Project Assistant: Mr. Debasish Maji (MSc: IISER Pune, ongoing, Project Funded)
- MS Supervision: 1. Mr. Iman Mahato; 2. Mr. Sorabh Meena
- Postdoctoral Mentorship: Dr. Prasenjeet Chakraborty (PhD: Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), ongoing, Institute Funded)
- PhD (Hydrogeology), Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
- MSc (Geology), Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
- BSc (Geological Sciences), Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
- Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, IISER Berhampur, Odisha, India (2025 - Present)
- Assistant Professor, Department of Geological Sciences, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India (2022 - 2025)
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, University of Alabama, USA (2021 - 2022)
