Noted academician and former Vice-Chancellor of the Jammu University Prof Amitabh Mattoo was today appointed Advisor to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The 53-year-old Mattoo will have the status of a cabinet minister, an official spokesman said after a cabinet meeting chaired by Sayeed here.
Born in Srinagar, Mattoo has been the Chief Executive Officer and inaugural Director of the Australia India Institute and Professor of International Relations at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
He is widely regarded as an inspiring and innovative builder of institutions and the foremost Indian intellectual seeking to build peace in the South Asian region.
He is on leave from New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University where he serves as a Professor of Disarmament Studies at the School of International Studies.
Mattoo has been a Member of the National Knowledge Commission, a high-level advisory group to the Prime Minister of India.
He is also President of the Indian Association of International Studies.
From November 2002 until early December 2008, he was the youngest ever Vice-Chancellor of the Jammu University, and the second youngest Vice Chancellor in the history of modern India.
Mattoo serves on the Governing Council of the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), the Executive Committee and Governing Council of Pugwash, the Nobel Prize-winning NGO, and is a member of the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Well Being.
