Professor R.K. Kohli, the Vice-Chancellor of Amity University Punjab, is the recipient of several state and national awards and the former Vice-Chancellor of Central University of Punjab. He pursued his post-doctoral UNESCO-WHO sponsored Long-term Programme on Modern Problems in Biology at Praha.

He has been decorated consecutively for three terms of five years each as Certified Emeritus Senior Ecologist (the highest global accreditation). He has chaired several NAAC Accreditation teams for evaluating universities and colleges. He is a member of the Project Appraisal Committees (Plant Sciences) of DST, CSIR, UGC and MoEF & CC, New Delhi and is on the Research Advisory Board of the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow as well as on the Governing Body of the IIM, Amritsar. He had been the Chairman, State Expert Appraisal Committee for Environmental Clearance (EAC) for Chandigarh, and now a member of the EAC for River Valley and Hydroelectric projects, New Delhi.

He also holds a rare distinction of being a Fellow of all the four official National Science Academies. He is JC Bose National Fellow of Government of India – the highest paid national recognition to any active scientist in India. He was conferred with the first Haryana Vigyan Ratna Award by the Government of Haryana in 2009, apart from the Punjab Rattan Award in 2008. The Government of UT Chandigarh bestowed upon him the state honour for his research and teaching in Environment on the Independence Day, 1998. He had also been the recipient of Dr. BP Pal National Environment Fellowship- the highest award of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (2001).