Sudhir Jain is making a mark as one of the most innovative leaders of an IIT. He is the first IIT Director ever to be re-appointed for a third term. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2020 for his pioneering leadership in setting up IIT-Gandhinagar. Prior to that, he was at IIT-Kanpur, where he served in several leadership roles, including Dean of Resource Planning & Generation and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering.

His research and development work has been in the fields of seismic design codes, dynamic of buildings, and post earthquake studies. Beside these, Sudhir has actively participated in teaching, research activities and development in Earthquake Engineering focused on developing countries He is an elected fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering and a member of U.S. National Academy of Engineering He has served on the Engineering and Computer Science jury for the Infosys Prize. He has also served as the president of International Association of Earthquake engineering (IAEE).

He earned Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Roorkee (now known as Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee), and Masters and Doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.