Dr Shekhar Kumar Niraj is the first Director of AIWC in the rank of Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Director, Advanced Institute for Wildlife Conservation and the former Director and Country Head, TRAFFIC (Global Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network of the IUCN and WWF), Vandalur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600048, India. His contact nos and email addresses are given below.

He has earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Arizona, USA in Spring 2009 and produced a dissertation on Sustainable Development, Poaching, and Illegal Wildlife Trade in India. The dissertation included- Spatial and temporal analysis of poaching and illegal wildlife trade in India, stakeholder analysis of conservation polices, and evaluation of macroeconomic impact on global wildlife conservation. He also completed a Graduate Degree Certification in Geographic Information Science (GIS) in fall 2008 from University of Arizona. Earlier he has completed triple masters in Forestry, Chemistry and a Master of Philosophy degree in metallic corrosion from Delhi University. He has published many papers in international journal and several reports on wildlife trade and conservation.

In his previous assignment as the Additional PCCF, Project Tiger in Tamil Nadu cadre, he was responsible for overseeing the management of tiger reserves in Tamil Nadu besides conducting several projects for tiger management, protection and community based protection and ecotourism initiatives. In his current assignment as the Director, Advanced Institute for Wildlife Conservation, he is responsible for setting up this advanced institute under the Tamil Nadu government, to give it to a structure and shape to be able to conduct high level conservation research including DNA based forensic investigations at molecular level. He has held various assignments of forest management, wildlife management and policies development as an officer with the Indian Forest Service specialized in wildlife over25 years.

As the former current Country Head of TRAFFIC India, a programme division of WWF India and a global office of the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, he developed expertise in monitoring illegal wildlife trade, analysis of poaching and illegal wildlife trade trends, assisting governments in detecting and preventing wildlife crimes, capacity building of various law enforcing agencies, including Police, Border Security Forces, Customs, Army, and Forest and wildlife, Policy development, involvement in international policies on illegal wildlife trade and wildlife crimes, assisting governments in policy and legal support development works, leading campaigns against wildlife crimes. He has been trained more than 10000 officers of various enforcement and research institutions throughout his career.