Dr. Somnath Rudra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal. He obtained his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Geography from Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. His doctoral research, "Impact of Fluoride Contamination on Human Health in Purulia District: A Geographical Appraisal", examined the spatial distribution of groundwater fluoride contamination, its health implications, and strategies for sustainable mitigation. Dr. Rudra has more than seventeen years of teaching and research experience at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Prior to joining Vidyasagar University in 2016, he served as Assistant Professor at Manbhum Mahavidyalaya, Purulia. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. During 2024–2026, he served as Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Geography at the Central University of Jharkhand, where he also held several important academic and administrative positions, including Convenor of the Board of Studies and Chairperson of the Departmental Research Committee. His research focuses on urban and regional planning, geospatial technologies, environmental management, groundwater studies, wetland ecosystems, climate resilience, and sustainable rural tourism. He has successfully supervised one M.Phil. and four Ph.D. scholars, with several doctoral candidates currently pursuing research under his guidance. Dr. Rudra has published more than forty research papers and book chapters in reputed international and national journals and publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Taylor & Francis. His publications have appeared in leading journals such as Applied Geography, Urban Climate, Sustainable Cities and Society, Environment, Development and Sustainability, GeoJournal, Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Wetlands, and Geosystems and Geoenvironment. His research integrates GIS, Remote Sensing, spatial statistics, machine learning, multi-criteria decision-making, and geospatial modelling to address issues related to sustainable urban development, environmental sustainability, and natural resource management. An active researcher and academic leader, Dr. Rudra has presented papers at numerous national and international conferences and has completed several professional development programmes, including specialised training conducted by the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS–ISRO). He serves as a reviewer for several internationally reputed journals published by Springer, Elsevier, and Taylor & Francis. He is also a life member of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing and the Indian Geographical Foundation. Dr. Rudra continues to contribute to interdisciplinary research and higher education through teaching, research supervision, academic administration, and collaborative research aimed at promoting sustainable regional development and geospatial innovation.

Dr. Somnath Rudra's academic and research interests lie at the interface of Urban and Regional Planning, Geospatial Science, Environmental Geography, Tourism Geography and Sustainable Development. His research integrates Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial statistics, machine learning, multi-criteria decision analysis, and geospatial modelling to address complex environmental and regional planning challenges. His primary research focuses on urban growth dynamics, urban ecological sensitivity, land-use/land-cover change, urban heat island assessment, climate resilience, and sustainable urban planning. He has extensively applied advanced geospatial models such as CA–Markov, DEMATEL-VWC, AHP, Random Forest, and geostatistical techniques to investigate urban expansion, landscape transformation, ecological vulnerability, and land suitability for sustainable development. Another major area of his research is groundwater quality and human health, particularly fluoride contamination in eastern India. His studies have examined hydrogeochemistry, groundwater resource assessment, human health risk, and sustainable water resource management using integrated spatial and statistical approaches. Dr. Rudra is actively engaged in research on wetland ecosystems, ecosystem services, anthropogenic stress, biodiversity conservation, and environmental sustainability. His recent work investigates wetland degradation, ecological restoration, and ecosystem service assessment in the Lower Gangetic Plain using geospatial technologies and field-based investigations. His current research also explores sustainable rural tourism, rural development, regional disparities, human–environment interactions, nature-based solutions, climate adaptation, and regional resilience. He is particularly interested in developing spatial decision-support frameworks for evidence-based planning and policy formulation. His teaching and research philosophy emphasises interdisciplinary approaches that combine geographical theory, geospatial technologies, environmental science, and quantitative methods to address contemporary societal and environmental challenges. Through research collaborations, doctoral supervision, and publications in high-impact international journals, he aims to advance innovative methodologies for sustainable urban and regional development, environmental conservation, and resource management. His broader academic interests include Urban Geography, Regional Planning, Geoinformatics, Environmental Geography, Population Geography, Climatology, Research Methodology, Spatial Statistics, Survey Techniques, Remote Sensing, GIS, Machine Learning applications in Geography, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).