Experts

Speakers

Prof. Santanu Chaudhury

Director IIT Jodhpur; Prof., Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Jodhpur

Professor Santanu Chaudhury, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, has assumed charge as Director, IIT Jodhpur, on 10 December 2018. Professor Chaudhury holds B.Tech. (Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering) and Ph.D. (Computer Science & Engineering) Degrees from IIT Kharagpur.

He joined as Faculty Member in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, in 1992. He was Dean, Under-Graduate Studies at IIT Delhi. He has served as Director of CSIR-CEERI, Pilani, during 2016-18. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus award from IIT Kharagpur.

Professor Chaudhury is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE) and National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He is a Fellow of International Association Pattern Recognition (IAPR). He was awarded the INSA (Indian National Science Academy) Medal for Young Scientists in 1993. He received ACCS-CDAC award for his research contributions in 2012.

A keen researcher and a thorough academic, Professor Chaudhury has about 300 publications in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, 15 patents and 4 authored/edited books to his credit.

Prof. Sarah Kenderdine

Professor, Digital Museology, EPFL, Switzerland

Professor Sarah Kenderdine researches at the forefront of interactive and immersive experiences for galleries, libraries, archives and museums. In widely exhibited installation works, she has amalgamated tangible and intangible cultural heritage with new media art practice, especially in the realms of interactive cinema, augmented reality and embodied narrative. Sarah has produced over 100 exhibitions and installations for museums worldwide. In 2017, Sarah was appointed professor at the École Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland where she has built the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+). Sarah is also director and lead curator of EPFL Pavilions a new art/science initiative on campus located in a seminal Kengo Kumar building. In 2021, Sarah was appointed corresponding fellow of The British Academy. Her upcoming book is Deep Fakes: A Critical Lexicon of Digital Museology (2024).

Prof. Ashutosh Sharma

Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kanpur

Prof. Ashutosh Sharma is a visionary academician who has made some exceptional interdisciplinary contributions in nanosciences and nanotechnology fields. From 2015-2021, he served as the Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He is also the Institute Chair Professor & Founding Coordinator of DST Thematic Unit of Excellence on Soft Nanofabrication and Chairman of Center for Environmental Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur since 2006. He is a recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award in engineering sciences for his "original pioneering contribution to the understanding of the behavior of thin films and other highly confined nanoscale systems." He was selected as the President of Indian National Science Academy in 2022.

Prof. Ramesh C. Gaur

Dean & Director (Lib&Inf.); Head - Kala Nidhi Division Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA), Ministry of Culture, GOI

Professor (Dr.) Ramesh C. Gaur is presently working as Dean (Administration), Director & Head-Kala Nidhi Division at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi, Ministry of Culture, Government of India (in HAG scale Pay scale (Level 15). During the period March 2022 to October 2023 he was the Director of National School of Drama. He has also served as Dean (Academics) IGNCA from 2019-2022. www.ignca.gov.in His past assignments includes; Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi (www.jnu.ac.in ),Tata Institute of Fundamental Research(TIFR), CRRI-CSIR, RIS, New Delhi, Management Development Institute(MDI), and IMT Ghaziabad etc.

Prof. Gaur has been appointed by Ministry of Culture, GOI as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for setting up of Indian Institute of Heritage. Prof. Gaur has also been appointed as Chairman of Project Monitoring Committee (PMC) of a NITI Aayog Project (under the directions of PMO) - Networking/ integrating Libraries amongst various Union Ministries/ Departments, to enable Libraries to deliver higher quality services in an integrated manner.

Dr. Mark Allon

Associate Professor, South Asian Buddhist Studies, The University of Sydney

Mark Allon is Associate Professor of South Asian Buddhist Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. His first degree was in fine art, majoring in sculpture, drawing and printmaking. He then completed a BA (Honours) at the Australian National University and PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Cambridge. After various research positions at the Kyoto University, University of Washington, and University of Sydney, he has taught Buddhist and Indian studies, and the ancient languages of India (Sanskrit, Pali and Gandhari) at the University of Sydney. His primary research interests are the composition and transmission of early Buddhist texts, the ways in which texts have been used by Buddhist communities, and the Indic languages of early Buddhist texts (Pali, Gandhari, Sanskrit). He is involved in two major research projects. The first concerns the study and publication of the recently discovered Gandhari Buddhist manuscripts from Pakistan and Afghanistan (e.g. https://gandhari-texts.sydney.edu.au/ & https://gandhari-texts.sydney.edu.au/gandhari-manuscripts/). The second involves the conservation, photographing, and study of the Kuthodaw Pagoda marble stelae recension of the Pali canon in Mandalay, Myanmar.

Dr. Ian McCrabb

Founder and Managing Director, Systemik

Ian McCrabb is the founder and managing director of Systemik (systemiksolutions.com), a Sydney based IT consulting group focused on enterprise websites in the corporate and government sectors. Since its establishment in 1994, he has led the design, development and commercialization of consulting methodologies, web technologies and content transformation services. Systemik currently supports a portfolio of open-source humanities research platforms clustered around content transformation and text analysis. Ian is the founder and director of Prakaś Foundation (prakas.org), a non-profit association established in 2005 to support digital scholarship in Buddhist studies and Sanskritic languages. Prakaś provides funding, strategic planning and program management for platform developments. Ian completed his MA in Sanskrit and Buddhist Studies at the University of Sydney. His PhD dissertation 'Buddha Bodies and the Benefits of Relic Establishment: Insights from a Digital Framework for the Analysis of Formulaic Sequences in Gāndhārī Relic Inscriptions' continued his focus on methodologies for the analysis of donative inscriptions and characterization of the ritual practices and religious significance of relic establishment in Gandhāra.

Dr. Shikha Jain

Director & Chairperson, DRONAH Foundation Vice President, ICOFORT ISc, ICOMOS Visiting Faculty, UNESCO C2C, Wildlife Institute of India

Dr. Shikha Jain is an architect with an extensive portfolio on cultural heritage that covers Conservation, World Heritage and Museum Planning of 70 plus projects in India and overseas, largely realised through her organisation DRONAH. As an international expert, she has advised government organisations and UNESCO Offices in Singapore, Malaysia, UAE, Myanmar and Indonesia. She has worked as consultant to UNESCO New Delhi and, represented Ministry of Culture, India on the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (2012-2015) and, as a bureau member for the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee in 2023. Besides preparing dossiers for several Indian sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, she has steered a range of Museums, Interpretation Centres and Cultural Parks from design to execution stage in several states of India and Overseas. She has recently completed John Marshall Museum and Buddhist Theme Park, Sanchi for MPSTDC and the ‘India Garden’ at Beijing, China for the Ministry of Agriculture, India and received the Gold Award at the Beijing Horticultural Expo, China in 2019. Her ongoing museum works include the Indian Museum, Kolkata and the Museum of Word, National Library for the Ministry of Culture besides State and City Museums in Patna, Bhopal and Jaipur.

Dr. Marnie Feneley

Honorary Lecturer of Asian Studies at the University of NSW

Dr. Marnie Feneley specialises in Asian Archaeology, Art History and Religion, and is Honorary Lecturer of Asian Studies at the University of NSW and President of the Association of Mainland Southeast Asia Scholars. Marnie uses digital visualisation technologies for the preservation and interpretation of important cultural heritage sites, and sculpture. She is a pioneer in the use of 3D immersive reconstructions of Southeast Asian temples and sculpture and cultural mapping. She has curated many exhibitions using immersive technologies which have been shown internationally to wide acclaim. Marnie has a PhD in Archaeology (Asian Art History) from the University of Sydney and a Master of Museum Studies from UNSW. Her book “Reconstructing God, Style, Hydraulics and Political Power and the West Mebon Viṣṇu” was published in 2023 by National University of Singapore Press. She has previously been a post-doctoral research fellow at UNSW working on the “Atlas of Maritime Buddhism” project which is now on permanent display at the Fo Guang Shan Monastery Museum, Taiwan with over 2 million visitors per annum. She is presently researching and co-curating the exhibition of early Buddhist sculpture in India called “Digital Twins: Negotiating identity and translocated heritage in the global age”.

Panelists

Prof. Sanghamitra Basu

Former Professor

IIT Kharagpur

Prof. Neeru Misra

Academic Advisor

BL Institute of Indology,

New Delhi

Dr. Om Prakash Dwivedi

Associate Professor of English Literature and Dean I/C School of Liberal Arts

Bennett University,
Greater Noida, UP

Prof. Arjun Ghosh

Professor
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Ms. Moumita Ghosh

Curator
Bihar Museum,
Patna, Bihar

Dr. Etee Bahadur

Assistant Professor of Development Studies
Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies,
Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi

Dr. Abira Bhattacharya

Assistant Curator (Department of Anthropology)
National Museum,
New Delhi

Dr. Satyakam Sen

Museum Curator
Kolkata Museum

Page updated

Report abuse