Dr. K. Radhakrishnan

Ex-Chairman, ISRO

Dr. Koppillil Radhakrishnan, is a Technocrat par excellence; a dynamic and result-oriented Manager with very fine personal and inter-personal qualities; an astute Institution-builder with a strategic vision; an able and diligent Administrator with a positive attitude; and an inspiring Leader with a rather rare skill of nurturing leadership in the younger generation.

Dr. Radhakrishnan graduated in Electrical Engineering from Kerala University (1970), completed his PGDM from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (1976) and obtained Doctorate for his thesis titled “Some Strategies for Indian Earth Observation System” from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (2000). He is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Science (FNASc), Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE); Honorary Life Fellow of The Institution of Engineers, India; Honorary Fellow of The Institution of Electrical and Telecommunication Engineers, India; and Member of International Academy of Astronautics.

Starting his career as an Avionics Engineer in Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, he held several decisive positions in ISRO in the domains of space launch systems, space applications and space programme management. He had commendably held the post of Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, the lead centre for launch vehicle technology in ISRO and Director, National Remote Sensing Agency. In his brief stint (2000-2005) in the Ministry of Earth Sciences, he had also been the Founder Director of Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and the first Project Director of Indian National Tsunami Warning System. He also held several important positions at the international level including Vice Chairman of Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (2001-05), Founder Chairman of Indian Ocean Global Ocean Observing System (2001-06) and Chairman of the Working Group of the Whole UN-COPUOS STSC (2008-2009). Dr Radhakrishnan was also awarded the Padma Bhushan on January 26, 2014.

Source: ISRO

Prof. Rajeev Ahuja

Director, IIT Ropar

Prof. Rajeev Ahuja is currently the director of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar. Before joining as director at IIT Ropar, Rajeev Ahuja was professor of computational Materials science at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is one of the most highly cited researchers in Sweden. He has done his Ph.D. from I.I.T. Roorkee in India in 1992. His main area of interest is computational materials science with focus on energy such Batteries, Hydrogen Storage & production, sensors as well high pressure physics.

He was elected FRSC (fellow of Royal Society Chemistry), London, UK, APS-Fellow by American Physical Society (APS), USA and Appointed in the advisory Board of Journal of Materials Chemistry A & Materials Advances from Royal Society of Chemistry (England). He was also awarded Beller Lectureship for the APS March Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ahuja is an elected member of the Swedish Royal Society of Sciences (KVS), of the board of the European High Pressure Research Group as well as of the executive board of the International Association for the Advancement of High Pressure Science and Technology.

Prof. Marc Madou

Samueli School of Engineering, University of California (USA)

Dr. Marc Madou completed his PhD from Ghent University, Belgium. He is currently a professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California (CA) and distinguished visiting professor at IIT Kharagpur (IN). His research area of expertise includes precision engineering, micromanufacturing, microfluids and miniaturization science (MEMS and NEMS) with emphasis on chemical and biological applications. He is the author of several books in this burgeoning field he helped pioneer both in Academia and in Industry. Madou was the founder of the SRI International’s Microsensor Department, founder and President of Teknekron Sensor Development Corporation (TSDC), Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley and Endowed Chair at the Ohio State University (Professor in Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering). The third edition of "Fundamentals of Microfabrication," an introduction to MEMS and NEMS, which has become known as a bible of micromachining, was published in July of last year.

Prof. Kamlakar Rajurkar

UNIVERSITY of NEBRASKA–LINCOLN (USA)

Dr. Rajurkar holds his B.E. from Jabalpur, India and PhD from Michigan Tech. He is the director of the Center for Nontraditional Manufacturing Research and a College of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering at University of Nebraska–Lincoln (USA). His research areas are sensing and modelling of traditional and non-traditional macro, micro and nano manufacturing processes. Dr Rajurkar received Hideo Hanafusa Outstanding Investigator Award at the International Symposium on Flexible Automation for “seminal contributions in the areas of non-traditional machining processes and equipment in particular process modeling, surface integrity and monitoring and control of macro and micro-Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM), Electro Chemical Machining (ECM) and Ultra-Sonic Machining (USM).” He is chairperson at ASME E. M. Merchant Medal Committee and International Academy of Production Engineers (CIRP).

Prof. V K Jain

IIT Kanpur

Dr. Vijay K. Jain has more than forty years of teaching and research experience. He has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley (USA) and University of Nebraska at Lincoln (USA). His areas of expertise are unconventional or advanced machining processes, machining of advanced engineering materials, accelerated cutting, computer-aided process planning (CAPP), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Dr. Jain has won three gold medals, two silver medals and one best paper award as recognition to his research work. The Institution of Engineers (India), Khosla Research Awards committee and All India Manufacturing Technology Design and Research conference organizing committee have given this honor to him. Dr. Jain has written Seven books and Thirteen chapters for different books published by international publishers.

Prof. Sunil Pandey

IIT Delhi

Dr. Sunil Pandey is a Welding Fabrication and Manufacturing Scientist & Consultant. He is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the School of Engineering at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Formerly he was Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is also the Former Vice Chancellor / Director of Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering & Technology (SLIET), Deemed University (CFTI under MHRD), Longowal, District Sangrur, Punjab. He is known for his contribution in the field of Welding Technology and manufacturing science. He has developed and established various cost effective and national need based technologies in the field of welding. He is an innovative researcher and just doesn’t believe in remaining a follower researcher. He is responsible for developing a World class Welding Research Laboratory at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He produces own consumables including underwater welding electrodes. This is the only Laboratory of it's kind.

Prof. S S Joshi

IIT Bombay

Dr. Joshi is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Joshi works on improving productivity and quality of multi-scale machining processes through physics-based modelling and characterization. Dr. Joshi worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Georgia Tech., USA (2002) and served as a Visiting Faculty at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA (2005-06). Dr. Joshi has undertaken over 38 research, consultancy and infrastructure development projects sponsored by aerospace, nuclear, defence and private organizations in India. He has established excellent research infrastructure for micromachining, laser micro-machining and titanium machining. During 2009-14, he spearheaded establishment of ‘National Centre for Aerospace Innovation and Research (NCAIR)’, at IIT Bombay as its founding Principal Investigator. The centre is an industrial consortia mainly sponsored by Govt. of India, The Boeing Company and IIT Bombay.

Prof. Mahesh Somani

University of Oulu

Dr. Somani did his BE from Jadhavpur University and PhD from Banaras Hindu University. He has worked over 16 years as a senior scientist at the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (Hydrabad). Currently, he is a professor at materials and metallurgical engineering, University of Oulu (Finland). His research area includes physical simulation and modelling of hot deformation processes of steels and other materials, especially the physical models based on internal state variables, static recrystallisation models for hot deformed austenite, models for coil tension and flow stress of steels, microstructure models for hot rolling of steels, and constitutive modelling of flow stress behaviour of both austenite as well as ferrite under complex loading conditions. He has developed high strength dual-phase steels and complex phase steels.

Dr. Himangsu Sekhar Panda

DRDO

Dr Himangsu Sekhar Panda has got more than 23 years of experience in defence R&D. He received his B.E. degree in mechanical engineering from IGIT Sarang, Utkal University Odisha in 1995 and the M.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1998. For his research work on “Hydrodynamic stability analysis of buoyancy driven flows using Chebyshev spectral method on non-staggered grid”, he has been awarded with the Doctor of Philosophy by IIT Kharagpur in 2010. He is an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer. In the year 1998 he joined as Scientist ‘B’ in DRDO at PXE Chandipur and currently he is working as Scientist ‘F’ and Additional Director. His research areas include Experimental Methods in Ballistics, ‘Safety, Quality & Reliability in test range, Spectral Methods for Scientific Computing, Microchannel Flows.

He and his team contributed immensely to the field of armament testing and evaluation. Demonstration of differential gas pressure measurement along the axis of gun barrel, development of background oriented schileren technique for flow visualization around a supersonic projectile, development of a novel technique to study the sabot discarding phenomena using high speed video and mirror technique, development of non-contact methods for the measurement of critical parameters of proximity fuze, modernization of Environmental Test Facilities are few of his significant contributions. His current research activities include high speed flow visualization and motion analysis, thermal characterization of gun barrel, thermal characterization of impact dynamics, safety analytics in armament test range.

He is a life member of Indian Science Congress Association, Indian Society for Heat and Mass Transfer and a member of ADMB panel under Armament Research Board of DRDO India. He is the recipient of MHRD scholarship during M.Tech with an outstanding GATE score of 99.42. He is also a recipient of Outstanding Term Paper Award by IIPA and DST. He was a member of the Indian scientific delegation to Japan during September 2012. He has been awarded with Laboratory Scientist of the Year 2017 in recognition of his meritorious achievements towards innovative problem solving approach which added new dimensions to the evaluation of armament stores using non-contact methods.

Prof. Satya Prakash

Emeritus Professor, IIT Roorkee

Dr. Satya Prakash is an eminent academician and a well-known researcher in the field of material science and engineering. After obtaining B.E (Met. Engg.) in 1967 and M.E (Met. Engg.) in 1969 from Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, he completed his Ph.D degree in Mech. Engg. from Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest in 1978 and joined Metallurgical & Materials Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He has served as Professor with Metallurgical & Materials Engineering Department, I.I.T Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttrakhand and has guided around 30 Ph.D students. He has been awarded with “Life Time Achievement-2008 for Corrosion awareness” by NACE INDIA SECTION and “Khosla Annual Research Award Gold Medal” by I.I.T. Roorkee.

Prof. Buta Singh Sidhu

Vice Chancellor, Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University

Dr. Sidhu obtained his B.E (Mechanical Engineering) and M.E (Production Engineering) degree from Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana (Punjab). He has completed his Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, INDIA. He has served as Dean (Academics), I.K.G. Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar, Director Y.C.O.E, Talwandi Sabo, Pbi. University Campus, Founder Director of PIT Mansa & PIT Kapurthala and Dean (Planning) MRSPTU, Bathinda. He has been awarded with Best Engineering College Teacher Award by ISTE, New Delhi, India. He has been nominated as Member of TSS Advisory Council, USA. He is a fellow of the Indian Society of continuing Engineering Education and Institution of Engineers, India.