We are looking for motivated students to join our research team. If you are interested, please send your CV to aritrapal [at] civil.iitm.ac.in
Dr. Aritra Pal is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, specializing in Construction Automation, from National Taiwan University, where he was honored with the Dean’s Award for exceptional academic achievement. Before joining IIT Madras, Dr. Pal worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge and National Taiwan University.
His research focuses on harnessing advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), digital twin construction, and building information management to address complex challenges in construction engineering. Through his work, he strives to enhance the efficiency of construction projects and promote sustainability in the built environment.
Dr. Pal also brings valuable industry experience, having managed large-scale construction projects across India and the Middle East. In addition, he actively contributes to his field by publishing his research in prestigious journals and conferences and serving as a reviewer for renowned publications.
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Construction Automation) – National Taiwan University (2019 - 2023)
M-Tech in Construction Technology and Management – Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (2013 - 2015)
B-Tech in Civil Engineering – West Bengal University of Technology (2007 - 2011)
Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India (2025 - Present)
Postdoctoral Research Associate , University of Cambridge, UK (2024 - 2025)
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (2023 - 2024)
Visiting Research Scholar, INSA Strasbourg, France (2022)
Assistant Professor, RICS School of Built Environment, Amity University, India (2017 - 2019)
Assistant Manager (Project Controls), Larsen and Toubro Construction, Oman (2015 - 2017)
Senior Engineer (Planning), Larsen and Toubro Construction, India (2011 - 2013)
Member, International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC)
Member, International Group of Lean Construction (IGLC)
Panel Member, Digitalisation of Construction Management panel (CED 29/P3), Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
Technical Committee Member, TC34: Digital Transformation for the Sustainable Built Environment: Innovations, Technologies, and Strategies for Sustainability, The Asian Civil Engineering Coordinating Council (ACECC)
2023 - Dean's Award: This award recognizes outstanding scholastic achievement among the class graduating in 2022-2023.
2023 - 4th prize in 1st IITM - IAARC Joint Hackathon: In this hackathon, we developed and trained a machine learning model for concrete strength prediction.
2023 - Taiwan NSTC Travel Grant: Taiwan National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) awarded this grant to attend the ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering 2023, held in Corvallis, Oregon, USA.
2023 - 2nd prize in 4th ASCE-VIMS Datathon 2023: In this datathon competition, we trained an object detection model on public datasets for construction equipment and worker identification in construction videos.
2022 - NTU – BFT Scholar Mobility Grant 2022: This grant was awarded by National Taiwan University and Bureau français de Taipei (BFT) to recognize the outstanding performance and effort in facilitating the international research connection between NTU and France.
2022 - 2nd prize in ASCE-VIMS/ IAARC Datathon 2022: I led a team of five students in this datathon competition. We labeled around 1200 images and trained an image segmentation deep learning model for construction waste classification.
2022 - Taiwan MOST Travel Grant: Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) awarded this grant to attend the 2022 CI & CRC joint conference held in Arlington, Virginia, USA.
2021- Outstanding Reviewer: I was selected as one of the 30 outstanding & emergency reviewers out of all 181 for ISARC 2021.
2021- Best Paper Award: The paper titled 'Semantic Segmentation of Superpixels for Vision-based Automated Construction Progress Reporting' received the best paper award at The 25th Symposium on Construction Engineering and Management held in July 2021 in Taipei, Taiwan.
2019 - Taiwan Scholarship: This scholarship was awarded by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan (ROC) for pursuing a four-year doctoral degree in Taiwan. The scholarship is designed to encourage outstanding students to pursue academic degrees in Taiwan.
2018 - RICS Excellence Award: I received this award from the RICS School of Built Environment in recognition of outstanding teaching.
2013 - Build India Scholarship: This scholarship was awarded by Larsen & Toubro group, India, for pursuing a two-year full-time master's degree at the Indian Institute of Technology.