School of Natural Sciences and Engineering

Dr. Deependra Singh is the Former Chairman and Managing Director of IREL (India) Limited, a Central Public Sector Undertaking under the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India. With over three and a half decades of experience in mining, mineral processing, and rare earth refining, he has been a key architect in strengthening India’s rare earth value chain.

During his nearly decade-long tenure as CMD, Dr. Singh led the development of both the upstream segment — from mining to rare earth oxides — and the midstream segment, covering metals to magnet production, contributing significantly to India’s strategic mineral capabilities. Prior to becoming CMD, he served as Director (Marketing), bringing strong commercial leadership to the organisation.

An Engineering graduate with an M.Tech in Industrial Design, MBA in Marketing, and Ph.D. in Mineral Technology, Dr. Singh has been associated with projects supported by the World Bank, OPEC, and the Asian Development Bank, and is a UNIDO Fellow (Germany). He has received several prestigious recognitions, including Lifetime Achievement and multiple CEO leadership awards for his contributions to public sector management and the rare earth industry. He has multiple professional association with Industrial and Institutional bodies and have the privilege of spearheading them as Chairman.

I am a comparative psychologist working at the intersection of primatology and cognitive science. I completed my PhD in Comparative-Developmental Psychology at the University of Portsmouth in 2021 and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod in France.

My research centres on naturally occurring behaviour in humans and other primates, examining how communication, tool use, and social interaction develop and vary across ecological and cultural contexts. Drawing on long-term field research, I combine fine-grained behavioural analysis with computational modelling of sequential structure to investigate hierarchical organisation, vocal flexibility, imitation, and the relationship between action and meaning.

At the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, in collaboration with Professor Anindya Sinha, I develop conceptual critiques of comparative cognition, examining how assumptions about objectivity, anthropocentrism, and species boundaries shape interpretation in animal cognition research. This is combined with empirical work in North-East India examining macaque behaviour across a gradient from anthropogenic temple–river systems to primary forest. Simultaneously, we are initiating passive acoustic monitoring of western hoolock gibbons in the Eastern Himalayas. I also founded the Perspectives Collective Journal, an open-access platform advancing more inclusive approaches to knowledge production.