Joydas is a Research Scientist I at the Center for Environment & Marine Studies (CEMS), KFUPM, Saudi Arabia. He is also a member of the CEMS Management Advisory Board, the Leader of the Marine Group, EIAs, and Benthic Ecology, and a project manager of client-funded projects in the Center. He has been working on the ecological and environmental aspects of the Saudi waters of the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea for the past 22 years. He has participated in around 150 environmental assessment projects (EIAs and monitoring projects) while working in the ARCEMS, KFUPM.
He joined the Center in 2002 and during his initial years in KFUPM, he worked on the UNCC-funded project "Oceanographic Survey in Support of the Marine and Coastal Damage Assessment (OSDA)" aimed to estimate the long-term impact of the oil spill in the Arabian Gulf during the 1991 Gulf Conflict.
Joydas obtained his Ph.D. from Cochin University of Science and Technology in 2002. He was a research member in India’s prestigious project ‘Estimation of the Marine Living Resources in the EEZ of India’.
His field of specialization is benthic ecology, and has interests in areas such as the taxonomy of macrobenthos, stress to the benthic community, indicator organisms, recovery, spatio–temporal variability, and multivariate statistics. He has studied the benthic communities in the Arabian Sea, Arabian Gulf, and Red Sea and has extensive experience in fieldwork in these seas. In two of the cruises of HCMR’s R.V. Aegaeo conducted in the Red Sea in 2014 and 2015, he was also chief scientist.
Joydas published 50 papers / chapters, presented 39 papers at the national and international conferences. He is also serving as a reviewer of research papers to determine their suitability for publication in ISI journals (119 peer review records in web of science). He is also serving as a Ph.D. thesis evaluator for some universities in India and a proposal evaluator for the North Pacific Research Board.
He has obtained (i) NEOM Social Responsibility Award 2024 within NEOM Individuals Track, (ii) the “Best Project Manager Award” for the academic year 2020/2021, awarded on May 30, 2022, by KFUPM, (iii) KNOWTECH Award – 22 for the research contribution, awarded on April 01, 2022, by Saudi East KNOWTECH (Knowledge & Technology), Risala, Jubail, (iv) Prof. C.V. Kurian Memorial Award 2019 for the contribution to Benthic Science, awarded by the Organizing Committee of the International Conference on Benthos, held on March 6-8, 2019, at Cochin University of Science and Technology, India, (v) ‘Best Applied Researcher Award of KFUPM/RI” for the year 2014, (vi) Outstanding Applied Research Team Award for the Academic Years 2006–'07, 2007–'08, 08–09, 2011-'12, 2014-'15, 2017-‘18, 2019-‘20 & 2020-’21 of KFUPM/RI, and (vii) Outstanding Reviewer Awards by Deep-Sea Research Part I (Elsevier) for 2014, Continental Shelf Research (Elsevier) for 2015, Marine Pollution Bulletin (Elsevier) for 2016 and Ecological Indicators (Elsevier) for 2017 and (viii) Top reviewers award by Publons for KFUPM (Decision Sciences – 2017).