Dr. Paravanparambil Rajakumar Jayachandran is a Post-Doc Fellow at the Applied Center for Environment & Marine Studies (ARCEMS) at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia, where he has been serving since March 2023. His primary role involves leading research initiatives focused on marine ecosystems, utilizing benthic biotic indicators and invasive species monitoring using eDNA metabarcoding to enhance the understanding of ecological dynamics.
Dr. Jayachandran’s extensive project management experience includes overseeing significant environmental assessments and contributing to Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs). He has been instrumental in projects related to marine ecotoxicology, where his expertise in assessing heavy metal contamination has been pivotal. His work informed the development of national seawater quality guidelines for heavy metals proposed to the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India. Previously, Dr. Jayachandran served as a Project Scientist at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) under a project funded by the NCCR-Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India. Additionally, he was an Assistant Professor in Aquaculture at St. Albert’s College, Kochi, Kerala, India. His diverse fieldwork spans Arctic expeditions under the national polar research program, where he studied benthic communities in Arctic fjords from 2016 to 2018, as well as research on the ecology and fish production potential of the Kodungallur-Azhikode backwater ecosystem, funded by the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology, and Environment.
Dr. Jayachandran holds a Ph.D. in Faculty of Marine Sciences from CUSAT, awarded in 2018. His doctoral research concentrated on the ecology and temporal changes in benthic communities in the Kodungallur Azikode estuary, a Ramsar site in the Vembanad Kol wetland. He is also a PADI-certified open water SCUBA diver, enhancing his capability to conduct extensive underwater fieldwork. In the realm of taxonomy, Dr. Jayachandran has made notable contributions by describing a new genus of clam and four new species using both conventional and molecular approaches. His documentation includes various marine organisms along the Indian and Kerala coasts, with significant discoveries such as the invasive species Mytella strigata in Indian waters. His research interests cover functional diversity and community ecology of aquatic communities in estuaries, mangroves, seagrass-seaweed beds, and deep-sea ecosystems.
Dr. Jayachandran is proficient in various data analysis and ecological research software, including R packages, MAPINFO, SPSS, CANOCO, Arc-GIS, MAPWINDOW, SURFER, and PRIMER (Plymouth Routines In Multivariate Ecological Research). His leadership in fieldwork, laboratory activities, data analysis, and report writing is well recognized. Dr. Jayachandran has authored over 52 research articles in SCI journals and numerous books and book chapters. His research contributions have been cited 613 times, resulting in an H-index of 14 and an i10 index of 24. In 2019, he was honored with the Distinguished Researcher Award from CUSAT.
