RESOURCE PERSONS

Samudra Gupta Kashyap is an eminent journalist, writer, traveler, researcher and story-teller. He did his MA in English Literature from Gauhati University and is an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi.

He has put in close to four decades to journalism, with the longest stint being in The Indian Express (1991-2018). A bi-lingual writer, he had earlier served in Prantik (1981 to 1986), the most respected Assamese fortnightly magazine, and in Dainik Asam (1987 to 1991), the oldest Assamese newspaper. A prolific writer, he has authored several books in both Assamese and English. A close associate of Dr. Bhupen Hazarika and Kalpana Lajmi, Kashyap did the in-depth research and wrote the script for their mega serial “Brahmaputra, the Son of Brahma: An Endless Journey (English)” telecasted by Doordarshan (2008-09).

He has won several awards for his contribution to media and society. Prominent among them are the Rai Bahadur MS Oberoi Award (Silver Medal) for Exposing Corruption in Media (2005) instituted by Transparency International India, the Bhupen Hazarika National Award (2015) instituted by Sarhad, Pune, and the DY365 Award for Excellence in Journalism (2009).

Apart from his normal routine, he has been involved in academics as a visiting faculty of various institutions across India such as Indian Institute of Mass Communication (Aizawl), Assam Administrative Staff College (Guwahati), North-East Police Academy (Shillong), National Institute of Public Cooperation & Child Development (Guwahati), Assam Police Training College (Dergaon), Tezpur University etc. He has also served as member of board of studies/management of various institutions, universities and social trusts.

He has visited several countries as a member of numerous official delegations of various departments. Kashyap has worked intensely in promoting the tourism industry in Assam. He was a member of the team which prepared the Tourism Policy of Assam (2017), and had written the text for a number of publications including a coffee-table book called ‘Awesome Assam.’

He is currently a State Information Commissioner of Assam, a position he has earned for his lifelong contribution and is the first journalist and public activist ever appointed to this coveted office.

Dr. Abhishek Shrivastava is a faculty of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Design at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He is the recipient of prestigious research grants from Ministry of Education (formrrly MHRD) and Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, along with other organisations. In addition, he is a recognised Subject Matter Expert (SME) in the field of Interaction Design by the NPTEL (MHRD).

For over a decade now, he has lead research, design and development of diverse technology deployments and end-user applications involving GUIs, Voice Agents and Voice User Interfaces. Apart from a relevant experience in Industry as a Design professional, Dr. Shrivastava is also known as a publishing political cartoonist with more than 7 years of experience with various Newspapers.

Dr. Sachin Datt is a visual designer and a science communicator, who completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts from College of Art, Delhi. He did his Master's in Visual Communication and Ph.D in the area of teaching science using visual narratives, from the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay. He completed his post-doctoral studies from Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, where he developed programs for science communication and Design and Technology education for schools.

He has authored a three volume book series on History of Electricity for Pratham Education Foundation. He has developed several course content on the history of Astronomy, Microbiology and Airplanes for Pratham’s science program. Dr. Datt currently heads the Department of Communication Design at School of Design, Sushant University, Gurugram, Haryana. He has authored graphic novels and has considerable research experience in the potential of storytelling in branding, advertising and education. He is currently working on developing a Taxonomy of “affective domain” for design education and teaching a multidisciplinary course on the future evolution of spirituality.

Hiranya Kalita is currently a Faculty & In-charge, Department of Film & Video Editing, Dr. Bhupen Hazarika Regional Government Film and Television Institute (DBHRGFTI), Assam. He is an alumnus of DBHRGFTI (formerly Jyoti Chitraban Film and Television Institute), and completed his Masters in Journalism & Mass Communication. He has also done one week Film Appreciation course in 2008 at Guwahati, organized by National Film Archive of India and Assam State Film (Finance & Development) Corporation Limited.

He worked at Programme Production Centre North East (PPC-NE), Doordarshan, Guwahati for three years. He has edited numbers of Feature Films, Documentaries, Tele-series, Ad films, Music Videos etc. and many of them are acclaimed and awarded nationally as well as internationally. He was an empaneled producer of PPC-NE) and Doordarshan Kendra, Guwahati. He has produced and directed a documentary “Samonnoiyur Seture Khampti Sakal” in Assamese and a Tele series “Rongdoi Ki Khushi” in Hindi. He has also produced “Call of the Wild”, a documentary in English.

He has been awarded “Best Editing Award" first at “2nd Vintage International Film Festival 2019” for the documentary “CHIAROSCURO” directed by Parthajit Baruah on 6^th October 2019 at Kolhapur, Maharashtra, and secondly at the “6^th Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival, 2016” for the documentary “The Dhemaji Tragedy: An Undefined Chapter” directed by Parthajit Baruah on 30^th April 2016 at Delhi.

Shri Kalita was felicitated by PPC (NE) for the programme “A DREAM” (worked as Editor) Directed & Produced by Manju Hazarika and Indira Amma getting the “Best New Year Musical Programme Award 2004” from Prasar Bharati. In 2014, he was felicitated at 13^th Dhaka International Film Festival, Bangladesh, for the Feature Film “ADHYAY-A Chapter” Directed by Arup Manna.

He was awarded for “Best Video Production” (worked as Director) and “Best Script” for the programme “National Integration” in Synergy Media Fest at St. Anthony College, Shillong, 2004 during his student life.

He is the Joint Secretary of ‘Gauhati Cine Club’, an oldest Non-Government Cine Club of North East India established in 1965 and has been associated with Guwahati International Film Festival (GIFF) since 2017 as the Coordinator-Films. He is one of the founder members of a Non-Government Organisation ‘RONGGHAR’ working in the field of Art & Culture.

Sahana Ghosh is a science journalist based in India. She reports on biodiversity, climate change, environmental health, and gender for Mongabay-India, the India bureau of the global news platform mongabay.com. Although desk-bound in the pandemic, her work takes her to diverse places and enables her to work with journalists and scientists from across the country and beyond.

Sahana Ghosh is featured as one of the 16 Women Restoring the Earth, 2021, by the Global Landscapes Forum. She is an alumna of the 2019 International Visitor Leadership Program, the U.S. Department of State's premier professional exchange program, and has steered women-centric reporting projects under the Solutions Journalism Network’s inaugural LEDE fellowship, 2019, and Earth Journalism Network Bay of Bengal grant 2018.

Faruk Iqubal is currently a Faculty and Head of Department of Audiography and Sound Engineering at Dr. Bhupen Hazarika Regional Government Film and Television Institute (DBHRGFTI), Assam. After completing his B.Sc. he pursued P.G Diploma in Sound Engineering, M.Sc. (IT), MBA (IT & System), and MBA (Media Management).

Since 1993, he has worked as director/producer and audiographer in numbers of films, video and television programmes, documentary films, audio albums, live & line sound effect creation for film & video and sync sound recording in film & video, some of which are honored with National Awards.

Earlier he worked as Sound Recordist cum Engineer at Jyoti Chitraban Film Studio Society, Guwahati, Assam from 1993 to 1999. Since 2017 he has served as Technical Director is several film festivals namely Guwahati International Film Festival (GIFF), Guwahati International Children Film Festival, Guwahati International Documentary Film Festival.

Iqubal has been a technical expert and resource person to several government organizations and industry like IASST, NERIWALM, AICTE SWAYAM, Directorate of Land Records, SSKS, Directorate Sericulture (Assam), BTC, Guwahati University, Film Division Documentary Film Festival (GOI), B Borooah College, Handique Girls College, Madhab Natya Mandi, Jyoti Chitraban Film Studio Society, NF Railwa and Infocomm India. He has worked as Chief Coordinator of AICTE MODROB and AICTE NEQIP project.

With 26 years long job experience Iqubal is a much sought-after audio visual /acoustic consultant for auditorium, cinema hall, conference room, audio visual/broadcast studios, gymnasium halls, offices, banquet halls, design and set-up of recording studios, listening rooms, home theatres etc and installation of acoustic treatment materials.

His expertise as an Installation Engineer is visible in many audio-visual setup, auditorium, broadcast studio, public address system etc. in numerous prestigious public and private sector organizations.

Kartik Chandramouli is a multimedia journalist and producer based in Mumbai. He works as the Digital Content Editor for Mongabay-India, the India bureau of the global news publication, Mongabay. He works with a pan-India network of journalists and artists to produce audio, video, graphics, and other multimedia stories about science and the environment. His interest lies in communicating complex environmental problems and solutions through audio/visual narratives.

In 2019, he received the Climate Tracker-One Earth Fellowship to report climate solution stories. Through Climate Tracker, he also reported from the climate change summit, CoP26, in December 2019. He was part of National Geographic’s Out Of Eden Slow Journalism workshop in Kolkata in the same year.

He has worked in the design and films department in digital advertising for about six years.

Rituparna Kakoty is a night owl. His job keeps him awake. A career journalist currently with The Times of India, he is part of the team that scans the day’s events—big or small, banal or novel—when everyone else has called it a day. He brings it all together under headlines and straplines within a strict deadline, giving people nuggets for thought to go with their wake-up cup. Thoughts that poke and provoke a dyed-in-the-wool optimistic to marvel at human accomplishments. Or, make an irreverent rationalist cringe at the thought of a mindless riot. These are stories—of feats, follies, fantasies and fetishes. Many repeat, some last a lifetime, most are ephemeral, bringing wary joy enduring a half-life.

Kakoty has been associated with the syntax repair shop (passed over commonly as the newsdesk) of mainstream Indian newspapers and magazines for the past more than 25 years. He has been covering, editing, and proofing news flowing in from every nook and cranny of this planet—from billion-rupee bungalows to tin-roof backcountry hovels. And from the farthest recesses of our universe. He has a cold, calculated and unprejudiced approach towards news, but his heart sings when, say, a tiger is rescued from a human-animal conflict. And it sinks when this majestic cat dies in a manmade confrontation.

A postgraduate in arts, what he calls a wasted youth over Much Ado About Nothing, he finds solace in science. He consumes jargon-free, free-form scientific literature with the appetite of a caterpillar. He lives with his wife and two children in Delhi.

Kaushik Bhuyan is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mass Communication, Assam Don Bosco University, Guwahati. He is an 2012 alumni of Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi from where he completed his MA in Mass Communication.

Apart from his involvement in teaching for the last seven years he is involved in digital media research. Kaushik has been invited as subject expert on digital media and folk media to numerous workshops, summer schools, by various institutes and organisations such as including Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Germany, DAAD sponsored programmes, Gauhati University, UNICEF sponsored programmes, Mizoram Central University, Asian Institute of Nursing Education, and DataLEADS.

He is a member of the Health Fact-checking India Training Network led by DataLEADS and supported by Google News Initiative and BOOM. As part of this initiative, he has trained over few hundred participants from the media, medical, and social work from across North East India in debunking medical misinformation. Prior to joining academics, he has produced corporate films for well-known brands and organizations. He also worked as a photographer for Genesys International Ltd and as Post-production Supervisor for idiscoveri Education, Gurgaon.

Kishore Kumar Sarma is a faculty member in the Department of Motion Picture Photography in Dr. Bhupen Hazarika Regional Government Film & Television Institute (formerly Jyotichitraban Film and Television Institute) since 2000. He has the privilege of teaching the technicalities of Motion Picture Photography in most of the premier institutions offering media courses in this region, as a guest faculty. He was trained to be a Cinematographer through a 3 year course in Cinematography from Kolkata and he has a Masters in Mass Communication. He did a FAC course from FTII, Pune in 2008.

He had the privilege of working as a director in documentaries, short films, advertisement films and music videos. He has also worked as technical director in a series of documentaries for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Department of Agriculture, Govt. of Assam.

He has been associated with organizing film festivals, cultural programmes and in making audio-visual project proposals etc for the government. He is also associated with various developmental activities like State Film Awards Festival, organized by Govt. of Assam and Assam State Film Finance Development Corporation (ASFFDC). Kishore Sarma is a founder member of two NGOs, namely, Film and Cultural Society of North East and LOVITA - which is working towards the propagation of film culture in the country.

Kalyanjit Hatibaruah Chairman/MD of Flugelsoft Group which is into Software Products/Services, Engineering Projects, Startups Mentoring/Funding and Industry Partnerships and has more than 24 years of entrepreneurial experience in different business verticals. He is also a Adjunct Professor at New Delhi Institute of Management, Tughlakabad, New Delhi.

A graduate engineer in ECE, from NIT Kurukshetra, and MBA - Systems from Deparment of Management Sciences, Pune University, his interests range from helping corporates develop business tie-ups with government in engineering and technology, mentoring technology startups, angel investor, providing digital marketing technology solutions, architectural concept designs and implementation.

He is also a expert Social Media and Reputation Management Consultant for celebs, corporate heads and politicians.

He has long experience of handling international clients to manage business and IT projects in different segments, involving multiple stake holders and vendors to ensure end to end project delivery in a Global Delivery Model.

He has also served in various syllabus committee for Computer Science and MBA for NITs and Central Universities. He also runs popular eLearning platform/courses for career guidance and technology and management.

He is involved in Global Branding & Creative films for corporates and government agencies. A man of varied tastes and talent Kalyanjit has acted in 2 assamese big budget films and is actively involved in promoting sports, artiste management and event management for social causes and is a sought after speaker at different forums.

Dr. Palme Borthakur is presently an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Earth Science, University of Science & Technology, Meghalaya. During the course of her doctoral studies she probed into the role of modern music in shaping and producing the urban cultural environment of Guwahati Metropolitan Area.

For her unique interdisciplinary work she is considered as a pioneer researcher of Music Geography of North East India.

Trained in Bharatanatyam Dr. Borthakur is devoted to the study of music, culture and gender issues with respect to the social and natural context of north east India.

Tridiv Hazarika, is currently General Manager (HR- Relations) & Spokesperson with Oil India Limited. With a background in Economics he holds a Post Graduate degree in Communication Studies as well as Business Administration. He is an alumni of the prestigious International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Erasmus University, from where he earned a PG Diploma on Sustainable Local Economic Development. Tridiv has also undergone training on Media from British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) at New Delhi and Corporate Communication at IIM, Lucknow.

Tridiv has enjoyed working closely with civil society and engaged in community development initiatives for long years. He has been working in the field of corporate social responsibility, development communication, corporate communication, sustainable development and media relations after joining Oil India Limited in 1998. For his work he has been recognized by CSR Vision, one of the few CSR monthly magazines in India as CSR Professional of the Month in Feb, 2013. He has been awarded Rupkar Bota by Shalmari Dighalia Juba Sangha for contribution to community development. He also won the Best Manager award by Guwahati Management Association in 2019.

A regular columnist in Assam Tribune and a visiting faculty in the Centre for Studies in Journalism and Mass Communication, Dibrugarh University he has written articles and made numerous presentations on CSR, Sustainable Development, Development Communication, Stakeholder Engagement, Career Planning and Media in International and National conventions and symposiums including various case studies and presentations on OIL’s CSR Policy to various government, non government organizations and academic intuitions. He has also made presentations at the Parliament on OIL’s CSR; presented papers on OIL’s CSR at the Global Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility in Vilamoura, Portugal in February 2006; at a peer-to-peer international forum organized by PetroFed in association with World Petroleum Council and UN Global Compact at New Delhi in 2007. In March, 2011, at a national conference on Physical Disability organized by CBM International at Mumbai in 2010, he was part of a delegation from Indian Oil Companies which visited Sao Paulo, Brazil to promote Indian Business and explore business opportunities. He also presented a paper on OIL’s award winning CSR initiative “Project Rupantar” of which he is the secretary, at the World Petroleum Conference held at Doha, Qatar in Dec, 2011.

Munmun Dhalaria, is a NatGeo Explorer and Founder Director of MoonPeakFilms, India,. Under the latter she had produced award winning documentaries about nature, science and social justice. An alumni of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), she follows good filming ethics strictly while delivering high quality cinematic films.

In 2018 she won a National Geographic grant for documenting the rare and elusive Western Tragopan, considered a holy grail among birders and wildlife photographers. In 2019, she made her first film for NatGeo titled ‘The Jujurana’s Kingdom’.

In 2020, she was the Assistant Director and cameraperson on a 10 episode wildlife series for Natgeo called ‘On the Brink’. She is currently producing broadcast films for national and international producers like Vice, IndiaAlliance and Agah Khan Foundation.

Munmun is also currently directing a science docu-series for television that deals with the discoveries of Indian scientists that have created an impact across India and the world. ​

Prof. Utpal Bora is an alumni of Assam Agricultural University-Jorhat, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology and Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi.

He is well known for his work in the field of aptamers, tissue engineering and biomaterials. Apart from his core area he has deep interests in environmental issues and was one of the lead investigators of the Ecology and Biodiversity Group for preparing the Ganga River Basin Management Plan - 2015, a multi-institutional mega project funded by the Govt. of India.

His scientific work has been highlighted in numerous print and electronic media both in India and abroad. He teaches molecular biology, genetic engineering and genome editing to both undergrads and postgrads. Currently he heads the Centre for the Environment at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.

Prior to his pursuits in the academic world he was a free lancer and wrote in both Assamese and English for magazines (Prantik, Mouchak, Eastern Newsline) and newspapers (The Sentinel, Eastern Clarion). Currently he is busy pursuing his interests in policy research and science communication.