The Tribune Trust has appointed noted journalist Raj Chengappa as the new Editor-in-Chief of The Tribune Group of Publications. He will take over on March 16, 2010, from H.K. Dua, who has been heading The Tribune since 2003 and has recently been nominated as a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha).

Born in Ferozepur, Chengappa is an award-winning journalist of 33 years’ standing. He is currently Managing Editor of India Today. He is also concurrently Editor of the Indian edition of Scientific American and India Today Aspire. He has written and anchored over 150 path-breaking cover stories for India Today on a range of subjects, including foreign affairs, security, politics, defence, business, science, technology, education, environment, health, sports and entertainment.

He pioneered India Today’s Top Colleges Survey that has become a benchmark for academic excellence apart from digitising the magazine library services and starting its Internet edition. He covered the 2008-09 Sri Lankan Civil War, the 2003 Iraq War, the 2001 Afghanistan War and the 1999 Kargil War.

He has won prestigious Indian journalism awards, including the Prem Bhatia Award for Political Analysis and Reporting in 1998 and the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting in 1987.

Widely travelled, Chengappa was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a Henry Stimson Fellow for international security at Washington DC and a Harry Brittain Fellow partly at Oxford University.

He is the author of the best-selling novel on India’s nuclear weapons titled Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power. He is currently a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change. He is married to Usha Chengappa, a yoga expert and painter, and they have two children.