Professor Kamalakanta Mahapatra is presently a Professor (HAG) at the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering. He is currently the Chair of IEEE Consumer Technology Society(CTSoc)— IEEE Rourkela Subsection of Odisha Chapter which started functioning in July 2020 under the IEEE Kolkata section. An interim executive committee has been agreed upon by all the members who will work on by law and other activities to make a vibrant Chapter in Odisha for CTSoc. The IEEE CTSoc, Odisha Chapter has been conceived to help current Consumer Technology practitioners improve their capabilities, and lead to further fundamental Consumer Technology research and development in the Eastern region of the India.

Prof. Kamalakanta steered the institute as the Dean of academics at NIT Rourkela from July 2017 to June 2019. He was the Dean of Alumni Affairs at the institution, and had been the Head of the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at the institution several times in the last decades. He has held the title of professor in the department since 2004. Meanwhile, he has held several administrative positions at the institute, such as Convener of Institute Academics Committees, Chairman of Press and Public Relation Committee, In-charge of Admission/Student Activities, Chairman of Purchase Committee at Students activity centre (SAC) and time table committee.

Apart from academic duties at the institute, Prof. Kamalakanta is a member of IEEE and IE (India), and has been the Chairman of reputed conferences such as IEEE-iSES (previouosly IEEE_iNIS) since 2016. Recently, he has been deployed as a DATE 2022 Technical Programme Committee member. He has been in the role of Principal investigators (PI) and Co-PI of few projects from Government of India and several other sponsoring agencies. He is a member of BoS and Senate at other institutes of national importance, as well as member of faculty selection committee of other technical institutes, spread throughout India. He was awarded the coveted J. C. Bose award in 2014 for best Engineering Oriented Research on behalf of the institute.

Professor Kamalakanta received the B.Tech.(Hons) and M.Tech. in Electrical Engineering degrees from REC, Calicut (now NIT Calicut), India in 1985 and REC, Rourkela (now NIT Rourkela), India in 1989, respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree defending his thesis on the topic “Active Harmonic Current Compensation using Hard and Soft Switched Inverters” in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India in 2000, under the eminent guidance of Prof. Arindam Ghosh and Prof. S. R. Doradla. In 1985, he joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department at NIT Rourkela, India, as a Lecturer and is continuing in the Electronics & Communication Engineering Department. His research interests includes Analog and Digital VLSI, Low power VLSI, Embedded Computing Systems, Hardware security and Power electronics.

Prof. Kamalakanta had also been conducting summer and winter courses on VLSI Design and CAD tools. He has authored a book chapter with Springer publication, titled “Proceedings in Energy” in the year 2015. His recent goals targeted are to continue teaching as per departmental needs and he further wants to float courses related to Internet of Things (IoT) Research to continue in Hardware Security; and to take up Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) for societal needs. He is about to start IoT Lab with support of Alumni funding at NIT Rourkela.

A detailed Curriculum Vitae can be requested at kkm[at]nitrkl[dot]ac[dot]in