Dr V P Sethi joined B Tech in Agricultural Engineering at College of Agricultural Engineering & Technology, PAU in the year 1985. He graduated in 1989 and gained industrial experience for two years before joining M Tech in the year 1991 in Mechanical Engineering department (Thermal Environmental Engg.,) at PAU. He joined as Assistant Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering in July 1993.He did Ph D (Solar Thermal Engineering) from Energy Research Centre, Panjab University Chandigarh in 2004. His Ph D thesis was nominated amongst the top 10 best theses at the National level by Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE) for innovative students’ project award-2007. He was promoted as Associate Professor in May 2007 and as Professor in July 2010. He remained Head of the Mechanical Engg. Dept. from Aug. 2014 to Aug. 2018. Now he has been given the additional charge of HoD of the department since Oct 2022 till data.

Apart from teaching UG and PG courses, he has handled Five research projects as PI (i) ICAR funded extramural project; Design & Development of forced draft paddy straw bale combustor technology for water and greenhouse heating in winter for higher crop productivity. (ii) Design & Development of forced draft paddy straw bale combustor technology for multi-purpose applications (crop drying, room heating and cooking). (iii) Punjab Govt. (on Solar Energy Utilization), (ii) ICAR (AICRP, Solar Energy component) and (iii) RKVY (Indigenous Hydroponics Technology) & one Project as Associated Scientist (AICRP Wind Energy component).

During the last three decades, Dr Sethi has contributed significantly in research at National and International level and developedseveral technologies in the areas of Biomass (paddy straw management), greenhouse design using thermal modelling. He has conducted research in greenhouse micro-climate control, efficient solar cooker designs, Photovoltaic mathematical models for maximum power output. He has also developed indigenous substrate and Nutrient Film Technologies (NFT) hydroponics technologies (soil-less farming) for non-arable lands and urban rooftops along with nutrient dossier system for higher water and crop productivity. His Hybrid hydroponics Technology has been patented by GOI and is commercialized in India and Abroad.

Professional Accomplishments

Received advance training on “Solar thermal & PV system applications” to the Department of Mechanical Engineering, North Dakota State University (NDSU), Fargo, USA in 2011.

Invited as “Visiting Research Faculty” by the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Plant Sciences NDSU for collaborative research work in the area of Greenhouse thermal modeling and Micro-climatic control in 2012.

He was invited as Guest Faculty by University of Guelph, Canada in Aug, 2016

For indigenously developing Hybrid Hydroponics Technology useful for lowering the cost particularly for developing countries.

He was Keynote Speaker at 2^nd International Conference on Materials, Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering (MMME-2017),  ThailandAdvanced Science and Technology Application Research Centre, Thailand from Dec 28-30, 2017 at Phuket.

He was Invited Speaker at Renewable Energy Conferences held in Beijing and Sanya in China in June and December 2013 respectively.

Research Projects completed

Research Publications:

1. Sethi V P and Dhiman M (2020). Design, space optimization and modelling of solar-cum-biomass hybrid greenhouse crop dryer using flue gas heat transfer pipe network. Solar Energy, 206, 120–135.Saloni Spall, V P Sethi (2020). Design, modelling and analysis of efficient multi-rack tray solar cabinet dryer coupled with north wall reflector. Solar Energy, 211, 908–919
2. Dhiman M, Sethi V P, Singh B and Sharma A (2019). CFD analysis of greenhouse heating using flue gas and hot water heat sink pipe networks. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. 163,1048-1053.
3. Singh B, Sethi V P, Dhiman M and Sharma A (2018) Design, evaluation and heat transfer analysis of novel forced draft paddy straw bale combustor using heat sink pipe networks for greenhouse heating. Energy Conversion and Management 173: 244-261.

4. Singh M and V P Sethi (2018) On the design, modelling and analysis of multi-shelf inclined solar cooker-cum-dryer. Solar Energy. 162; 620-638

5. Sethi V P, Pal D S and Sumathy K (USA) (2014). Performance evaluation and solar radiation capture of optimally inclined box type solar cooker with parallelepiped cooking vessel design. Energy Conversion and Management 81(5), 231-241.

Awards and Recognition:

• The Institution of Engineers (India) has awarded Dr Sethi, two National awards (i) K F Antia Memorial award-2008 and (ii) President of India’s Award-2010 for best published work.

• He was awarded distinction at International level by Stanford University, USA in Nov. 2019 by including his name in the top 2% best scientists list at global level till data.

• He was Conferred with “International Fellow Award 2019” for outstanding contributions organized by SardarVallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Meerut.

• He has received ISTE best teacheraward for the year 2024.