Manickam Jayakannan (JK) has obtained his PhD degree from Indian institute of science, Bangalore, India (2000) and undertook his post-doctoral studies at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (2000-2001). He worked as a polymer scientist at JFWTC General Electric R&D (2002), Bangalore and as a scientist at CSIR-NIIST (2003-2007) Trivandrum, prior to joining IISERPune in 2007 as Assistant Professor to embark the journey of building the new academic institute. He is currently continuing as a Professor in the chemistry department. 

Kalika Prasad obtained his PhD from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He was EMBO post doctoral fellow at Utrecht University, The Netherlands and then moved to IISER Thiruvananthapuram as group leader. Our laboratory uses tissue-culture-mediated de novo shoot regeneration and innate ability of restoration of tissue or organ lost in injury as models to address fundamental questions related to acquisition of pluripotent state, reconstitution of stem cells, dynamics of cellular behaviour, assembly of regulatory interactions and gene regulatory network. Most of our inferences are based on live imaging of cytological events during regeneration. He uses interdisciplinary approaches which combine molecular biological tools, genetics, genomics, bio-imaging and computational modelling to unearth the mechanisms of cellular reprogramming and developmental plasticity in plant.

Seema Sharma is an experimental particle physicist and a member of the CMS Experimental Collaboration at Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN. She joined the physics faculty at IISER, Pune in April 2014. Just before joining the IISER, she was a postdoctoral research associate at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). She did her PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. Her undergraduate studies were completed at University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. 

Sudha Rajamani obtained her PhD (Biochemistry) in 2002 from the National Institute of Immunology at New Delhi. Subsequently, she joined the Fink lab at University of California in Santa Cruz (UCSC), USA, for a postgraduate research stint in the area of Parkinson's Disease. A change in her career trajectory led her to her current field of research in Astrobiology. She initiated her work in this area with a postdoctoral position at the Deamer lab in UCSC and completed with a postdoctoral position at the FAS Center for Systems Biology at Harvard University, prior to joining IISER Pune in 2012.

Dr. Subhedar earned his PhD in fish endocrinology from Nagpur University in 1973 and joined its Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, where he taught animal physiology and neuropharmacology. He established a research lab focused on neuropeptides and reproductive regulation in fish, discovering key sensory pathways and the role of neuropeptide Y. Later, he expanded his research using rodent models to study behaviors related to hunger, anxiety, depression, learning, and addiction. His recent work highlights the role of CART peptides in fear and reward processing. Dr. Subhedar has guided 15 PhD students, published extensively, and received support from major scientific agencies. After retiring in 2008, he joined IISER Pune as a visiting faculty member in physiology and neurobiology. 

Nishad is an alumnus of St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. After completing his PhD he took up an independent research position at IISER Pune, as a DST-INSPIRE Faculty Fellow. He transitioned to Assistant Professor and DBT-Wellcome Intermediate Fellow in January 2021 at IISER Pune. Nishad's research focuses on de-convoluting the logic of AMR genetics at mechanistic and evolutionary levels. Using laboratory evolution, genomics and biochemistry, Nishad is attempting to understand why certain mutations or combinations of mutations are more prevalent than others in drug-resistant bacteria.Eventually Nishad's research hopes to identify strategies for identifying evolution-proof drug combinations.

M. S. Santharam is on the faculty of physics at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India. Research interests broadly cover the areas of chaos and nonlinear dynamics, quantum chaos, quantum computation and machine learning, statistical physics, complex networks, extreme events and complex systems. Specifically, the problems range from driven quantum systems and random matrix theory to random walks and extreme events on networks and data science

Joy Monteiro obtained his PhD in 2016 from the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He was then a postdoctoral scientist at the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University until 2019 and joined IISER Pune in 2020. Joy’s research is mostly curiosity driven, with an inclination towards problems in climate science with a significant mathematical and computational component. The aim is to elucidate fundamental physical principles underlying climate phenomena using observations, theory and modelling. His current work focuses on extreme heat events in South Asia and developing a flexible modelling framework to facilitate building climate model hierarchies.

Aurnab Ghose read Biology and Chemistry at Presidency College, Calcutta, India followed by a Masters from the University of Leicester, UK. His PhD research was conducted at The Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, UK. Following postdoctoral research at the Dept. of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, USA, he joined the faculty of IISER Pune where his group studies the development and function of neural circuits. 

Srinivas Hotha earned his MSc from the University of Hyderabad and MTech from IT-BHU, Varanasi. He completed his PhD in 2001 under Dr. Mukund Gurjar, conducting research at NCL Pune and IICT Hyderabad. He pursued postdoctoral studies with Prof. Tarun M. Kapoor at Rockefeller University, New York, before returning to India to join NCL as a Scientist. In 2010, he became Associate Professor of Chemistry at IISER Pune, where he mentors research in carbohydrate chemistry. Hotha has received several young scientist awards and was awarded the DST-Swarnajayanti Fellowship in 2010 for his work on gold-catalyzed glycosidation. 

Suneeta Vardarajan obtained her PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2002 from The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) Chennai. She was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Munich, and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta and the University of New Brunswick. She was Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta prior to joining IISER Pune in 2010. Research in Dr. Suneeta Vardarajan's group is in black hole physics, ranging from classical perturbation theory (which is important for providing astrophysical signatures of black holes) to quantum features of black holes.

Dr. Chandrasheel Bhagwat is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at IISER Pune, where he has been on the faculty since 2012, initially as an INSPIRE Faculty and later as Assistant Professor. He earned his PhD in Mathematics from TIFR Mumbai in 2011 under the guidance of Prof. C. S. Rajan, focusing on spectral analogues of the strong multiplicity one theorem. He holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from ISI Bangalore and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Pune. Prior to his faculty roles, he was a postdoctoral fellow at IISER Pune. His research interests include Number Theory, Representation Theory of Lie Groups, Spectral Theory of Differential operators on locally symmetric spaces,  Special values of L-Functions associated to Motives etc.

Prof. Shyam Rai earned his Ph.D. (1988) from the Indian School of Mines and M. Tech (1977) from the University of Roorkee in Applied Geophysics. He earned B.Sc. (Hons.) in Physics from Banaras Hindu University in 1973. Prior to IISER Pune, he was affiliated with IISER Kolkata (Professor of Earth Science, 2009-10) and the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad (1978-2014, retired as Chief Scientist). Prof. Shyam Rai's research is primarily directed to understand the Earth structure, earthquake dynamics, and evolution of the India- Himalayan-Tibet region. 

Pushkar Sohoni received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 for his research on the Deccan sultanates, after which he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. He worked at his alma mater till 2016, when he joined IISER Pune. Dr. Pushkar Sohoni's research explores architecture as a form of language and language as a cultural artefact, emphasizing the role of material culture in understanding historical societies. His work spans the history of architecture, socio-linguistics, and art history, examining how built forms, coins, and languages offer insights often absent in textual records. He investigates how material and immaterial artifacts together shape our understanding of the past. 

Dr. Anirban Hazra is a theoretical and computational chemist at IISER Pune, where he serves as a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry. He earned his PhD from Princeton University in 2005, focusing on simulating molecular electronic spectra using quantum mechanical methods. His research spans physical chemistry, chemical education, and science communication. Prior to joining IISER, he conducted postdoctoral work at Penn State on proton-coupled electron transfer reactions. An active science communicator, Dr. Hazra co-authored The Story of Chemistry, a popular science book. He is a recipient of several honors, including the IBM-Löwdin Award and Pickering Teaching Award.

Sunil Mukhi has a PhD in theoretical physics, with a specialisation in quantum field theory and supersymmetry, from Stony Brook University, USA.  He held a postdoctoral position at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy and was a faculty member at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai for 27 years where he held the posts of Senior Professor, Dean, Graduate Studies and Chair, Department of Theoretical Physics, before joining IISER Pune. Prof. Sunil Mukhi's research addresses fundamental properties of the theory of quantum fields and strings. It includes the study of conformally invariant quantum theories, which are useful to understand both critical systems at phase transitions as well as the propagation of strings.

After getting a BTech in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Raghuram moved to Mathematics and got a PhD in Mathematics in 2001 from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India. He held postdoctoral positions at University of Toronto, Canada and TIFR, Mumbai, India and visiting assistant professorships at Purdue University and University of Iowa, USA. He was at Oklahoma State University, USA as an associate professor before joining IISER Pune in 2011. His research interests are at the interface of Number Theory, Representation Theory, Algebra, and Geometry. He is particularly interested in the special values of L-functions. Hiss work uses analytic techniques from the Langlands program and geometric techniques concerning the cohomology of locally symmetric spaces.