Indian geophysicist in race to head China's earthquake research institute

In a first, India-born geophysicist Paramesh Banerjee is among the four shortlisted to head the Institute of Geophysics, a top scientific organisation of China's Earthquake Administration (CEA). The other three candidates are Chinese.

"Final result is not out yet, but will feel proud to be the first Indian in that position," Banerjee, currently technical director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) at Nanyang Technical University (NTU), told this correspondent in an email.

"That's great news," Vineet Gahalaut, director of the National Centre for Seismology in New Delhi, told IANS.

"Paramesh was one amongst the few who initiated GPS measurements in India and, during the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, he was the one who proposed that the giant earthquakes could cause deformation at distances as far as 2,500 km away which could be captured by the GPS."