Thirteen Academic Advisory Council

Prof Frederick L Coolidge Professor Co-Director of Undergraduate Education, Psychology Department, University of Colorado, USA

Prof Frederick Coolidge received his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Florida (UF) and completed a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Clinical Neuropsychology at UF. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS). Currently, he is also Co-Director of Undergraduate Education in Psychology, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Archaeology. He has received several teaching awards, including the lifetime designation as University of Colorado Presidential Teaching Scholar. He also received the UCCS LAS Annual Outstanding Research and Creative Works Award (2004), and the UCCS Annual Faculty Award for Excellence in Research (2006). Prof Coolidge is a three-time Fulbright Fellowship Award recipient (1987 NIMHANS, 1992 Manipal, 2005 India-wide). For the past nine years, he has been a Visiting Professor/Guest Professor at IIT Gandhinagar, teaching courses on research methods, brain evolution, and sleep and dreams. Prof Coolidge is a member of the Association of Psychological Science, the European Society for Human Evolution, the Society for American Archaeology, and International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences. He teaches introductory and advanced undergraduate statistics, cognitive evolution, evolutionary neuropsychology, abnormal psychology, and sleep and dreams.

Prof Ashish Garg Professor and Head, Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering and Kotak School of Sustainability Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Prof Ashish Garg is an engineer by training and is currently Professor and the Head of Sustainable Energy Engineering (Founding) at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He has founded several sustainability-related entities and actions at IIT Kanpur since 2020, including the Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering, Kesavan Center for Energy Policy and Climate Solutions, and Kotak School of Sustainability, securing external funding of over 125 Cr. Prof Garg research is on different aspects of clean energy and sustainability, with current interests in solar photovoltaics, energy harvesting, hydrogen, recycling, decarbonization, NetZero, and energy policy matters, with over 200 research publications. For his research, he has worked with several universities and companies, nationally and internationally, with executed projects of 20+ Crores as PI and co-PI. Prof Garg research has given rise to 30+ Masters and 15+ PhD theses. He is also a passionate teacher with a few courses on MOOC platform which are globally accessible. He has conducted several national-level exercises to develop a well-rounded materials engineering curriculum that has resulted in a few initiatives in IITs/NITs and IISc. He is a regular speaker and panellist on several forums related to sustainability. He passionately advocates sustainable living and sustainable practices for a better world and for adopting a collaborative approach for the same. In his free time, he loves to trek in Himalayas.

Prof Nuno Guimarães Professor Department of Information Science and Technology (ISTA), University Institute of Lisbon, (ISCTE-IUL), Portugal

Prof Nuno Guimarães graduated in 1983 in Electrotechnical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST/UTL), MSc. In EEC IST/UTL (1987) and got his PhD in Electrotechnical and Computer Engineering (1992) from IST, Lisbon, Portugal. He was Professor at IST/UTL (1992/1997) and Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (1997/2012), invited Professor at the TUB (Berlin Institute of Technology) Germany (2010), and consultant/researcher at AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, USA (1989-1991). He was Dean of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (2003-2009), Pro & Vice Rector of ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon (2012-2018). He was a member of the board and founder of several startup IT companies (1999 to 2006). Prof Guimarães is Senior Member of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) since 2012, Chair of the Portuguese Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) since 2021, and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Cyberspace and Law Research Center of the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon since 2022. His academic and scientific interests include Human Computer Interaction and User Experience, Digital Society Challenges, Technology and Law. He is a visiting scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar since 2014.

Prof Pankaj Jalote Distinguished Professor Computer Science and Engineering, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi

Prof Pankaj Jalote is currently a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi. He was the founding Director of IIIT-Delhi from 2008-2018. Earlier, he has also been an Assistant Professor at University of Maryland College Park, Professor and Head of Computer Science Department at IIT Kanpur, and Chair Professor at IIT Delhi, he has also been Vice President at Infosys for two years, Visiting Researcher at Microsoft in Redmond for one year, and Interim Vice Chancellor of Delhi Technological University (DTU) for six months. He has a B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, MS from Pennsylvania State University, and Ph.D from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of five books, some of which have been translated in Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc, and the Indian edition of his text on Software Engineering was adjudged the bestselling book by the publisher. His main area of interest is Software Engineering and Higher Education. He has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Intl. Journal on Empirical Software Engineering, and IEEE Trans. on Services Computing. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and INAE and a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Kanpur.

Prof Shekhar Mande Distinguished Honorary Professor IIT Gandhinagar

Prof Shekhar Mande received his M.Sc in Physics from the University of Nagpur in 1984 and PhD in Molecular Biophysics, from IISc Bangalore in 1991. Following his PhD, he worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands. He has served on many national and international committees, including the scientific advisory committee of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Trieste, Italy; Management Council of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai; member of the Council of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; member of the Management Councils of the Solapur University and the Savitribai Phule Pune University; member of the Governing Body of the Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA), etc. Prof Mande is currently Distinguished Professor at the Bioinformatics Centre, Savitribai Phule Pune University, the position which is generously funded by Dr. Anand Deshpande. He is an elected Fellow of all three Science academies, namely, National Science Academy of India, Allahabad; Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. He has been recognized by many awards, mainly the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Biological Sciences in 2005. He served as the Director General of CSIR and Secretary of DSIR, Govt of India during October 2018- April 2022.

Prof Barjor Mehta President CEPT University Ahmedabad

Prof Barjor Mehta is the President of CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India. The University was established in 1962 and focuses on understanding, designing, planning, constructing, and managing human habitats. The University comprises six Faculties, namely: Architecture, Planning, Technology, Design, Management and a Foundation Program. The Government of India has recognized CEPT University as one of four Centers of Excellence in urban planning and urban design. Barjor has close to 40 years of experience working on a wide range of aspects of the urban sector. Prior to joining CEPT University, Prof Mehta worked with the World Bank for 23 years and was based in Washington DC, Dar es Salaam, New Delhi, Beijing, and Singapore from where he worked on multiple urban sector projects across several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. Before joining the World Bank, Prof Mehta has lived and worked on urban initiatives in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Bhutan. Prof Mehta is an architect and urban planner.

Dr Samir Mittal Chief Technology Officer Micron Technology, USA

Dr Samir Mittal leads AI in Silicon Systems Design and Advanced Memory Systems development at Micron Technology which comprises the following functions: DRAM module development, CXL product development, Mixed signal silicon development, Design automation, Product yield engineering, Competitive analysis, Global lab infrastructure, and Custom software development. Dr Mittal guides Micron’s university engagements for systems and design. He is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for College of Engineering at The Ohio State University. As an executive champion of the Micron’s Center of Excellence at Georgia Institute of Technology, he serves on the advisory board of the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering. Dr Mittal is currently spearheading efforts to build a strategic relationship between Micron and IIT Gandhinagar. Prior to Micron, Dr Mittal founded SCUTI AI, a startup focused on next generation data center infrastructure for deep learning applications. Dr Mittal and the SCUTI team transitioned to Micron designing and developing data center persistent memory (3DXP) products where they launched the world’s fastest SSD in record time. Prior to SCUTI AI, he was VP of Engineering at SanDisk leading the industry transition to an All-Flash data center with full stack solutions. Dr Mittal also held senior leadership roles at Qumu Corporation delivering secure cloud services video products, and at Seagate Technology in hard disk drive-based storage products. Dr Mittal earned a doctorate from The Ohio State University, specializing in control systems and signal processing. He has been recognized by the university with the E.G. Bailey award for entrepreneurship as an outstanding alumnus.

Prof Richard Miller President Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA

Prof Richard Miller earned his B.S at the University of California, Davis, his S.M. from MIT, and Ph.D from the California Institute of Technology, USA. Prof Miller was appointed President and first employee of Olin College of Engineering in 1999; in June 2020 he became President Emeritus. He then served as the Jerome C. Hunsaker Visiting Professor of Aerospace Systems at MIT (2020-2021). Prof Miller is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, The Royal Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Inventors, and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He is co-recipient of the NAE Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education twice—in 2013 and again in 2022. Prof Miller also received the 2017 Brock International Prize in Education, and the 2011 Marlowe Award from the American Society for Engineering Education. In 2014, he received the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award and in 2002 he received the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award from the University of California at Davis. Prof Miller has served as Chair of the Board on Higher Education and Workforce of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and as Chair of the Engineering Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation.

Prof Govidan Parayil Dean and Professor, Patel College of Global Sustainability and Professor School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies University of South Florida, USA

Prof Govindan Parayil earned his Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Va. (1990), his M.A. in Applied Economics from American University, Washington, DC (1985), an M.S. in Science, Technology and Policy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y. (1983), and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Calicut, India (1978) (formerly Regional Engineering College Calicut). He was a Rockefeller Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Environmental Change at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Since 2017, Prof Parayil has been serving as Dean and Professor of the Dr. Kiran Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida (USF). At USF he also holds a concurrent appointment as a tenured full professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies. He was Vice-Rector of United Nations University (UNU), Tokyo, Japan (2008-2014) and Director of UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (2009-2013) while on leave from the University of Oslo, Norway, where he was Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation (2004-2015). He was an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Information and Communications Management, National University of Singapore, and an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Sciences at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has authored, edited and co-edited six books and published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous book chapters. A leading expert in the field of global sustainability with particular interest in energy and climate change, Prof Parayil follows an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability – from describing problems using knowledge and analytical tools from engineering, management and social sciences to finding innovative solutions that are user-focused and market-driven.

Prof Supreet Saini Professor, Chemical Engineering & Fellow, Wellcome Trust/DBT (India Alliance) Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

Prof Supreet Saini obtained his BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi in 2005 and PhD in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2010. Prof Saini is a Professor & a DBT/Wellcome Trust (India Alliance) Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Bombay. Prior to joining IIT Bombay, he was an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar (2010-2012), where he also headed the Faculty Recruitment Committee among other responsibilities. He is the recipient of the Young Engineer Award 2017 (Indian National Academy of Engineering) and the Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award 2011 (Department of Biotechnology). His research interests include understanding how chance, determinism, and history shape evolutionary trajectories of populations and communities.

Prof Shyam Sunder James L. Frank Professor Emeritus of Accounting, Economics, and Finance, Yale School of Management Yale University, USA

Prof Shyam Sunder received his engineering education at IIT-Kh and Indian Railways Institute of Mech. & Elect. Engg. at Jamalpur, and his MS and PhD in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. He is the James L. Frank Professor Emeritus of Accounting, Economics, and Finance at the Yale School of Management and Professor in the Department of Economics, having earlier served on faculties of the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon and California Institute of Technology . He is a renowned accounting theorist and experimental economist. His research contributions include financial reporting, information in security markets, statistical theory of valuation, and design of electronic markets. He is a pioneer in the fields of experimental finance and experimental macroeconomics. Prof Sunder has won many awards for his research that includes ten books and more than 236 articles in the leading journals of accounting, economics and finance, as well as in popular media. Prof Sunder’s current research includes the problem of structuring U.S. and international accounting and auditing institutions to obtain a judicious and efficient balance between regulatory oversight and market competition. He is a past president of the American Accounting Association, former director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at Yale, distinguished fellow of the Center for Study of Science and Technology Policy in Bengaluru, a fellow of Yale Humanities Center, and research fellow of Research Institute of Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University.

Prof Nitish V Thakor Professor of Biomedical Engineering Johns Hopkins University, USA

Prof Nitish Thakor received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay and earned both M.S. in and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prof Thakor is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also has an appointment in the Johns Hopkins Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prof Thakor directs the Laboratory for Neuroengineering and is also the director of the NIH Training Grant on Neuroengineering. He also served as the founding Director of Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE) from 2008-2022. Prof Thakor teaches Medical Instrumentation and Rehabilitation Engineering, and his research focuses on neuroengineering (technologies for brain monitoring, brain machine interface, neurally controlled upper limb prosthesis). He is an author/co-author of more than 450 refereed publications and a Major Reference Work Handbook of Neuroengineering. He is actively engaged in international scientific programs, collaborative exchanges with various Universities. Prof Thakor is a recipient of a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, IEEE, Founding Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Fellow of International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering and is an elected member of the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Thakor is a Distinguished Alumnus and Distinguished Service Alumnus of IIT Bombay.

Prof Satish K Tripathi President State University of New York, Buffalo, USA

An internationally distinguished researcher and higher education leader, Prof Tripathi, PhD, is the University at Buffalo’s 15th president. Prof Tripathi, who served as UB’s provost from 2004-2011, was dean of the Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside, from 1997-2004. Previously, he spent 19 years as professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, including seven years as department Chair. In 2024, Prof Tripathi was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A fellow of IEEE and AAAS, he has published more than 200 scholarly papers and supervised more than 30 doctoral and postdoctoral students. He served on editorial boards of many international scholarly journals and program committees of numerous international conferences. Prof Tripathi graduated at the top of his class from Banaras Hindu University (BHU). He holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in computer science from the University of Toronto, as well as master’s degrees in statistics from the University of Alberta and BHU. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from BHU and honorary doctorates from Maharaja Surajmal Brij University, the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, and Brock University in Canada. Prof Tripathi is co-chair of the Association of American Universities (AAU) Task Force on Expanding U.S.-India University Partnerships, and he serves on the College Football Playoff Board of Managers. Previously, he was chair of the Mid-American Conference Council of Presidents and Internet 2. He also served on the boards of the AAU, the NCAA Division I, the NCAA Board of Governors, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Prof. Nitin Kumar Tripathi Vice President of Academic Affairs, Director-Special Degree Program Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand

Prof Nitin Tripathi received his PhD and MTech in Remote Sensing from IIT Kanpur in 1994 and 1987, respectively, and BTech in Civil Engineering from NIT Warangal in 1984. Prof Tripathi is the Executive Director of Special Degree Programmes at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand, and is a Professor of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems there. Previously, he served as the Dean, School of Engineering and Technology, Director, Academic Quality, Leader ICT, and Coordinator of Remote Sensing and GIS at AIT. Before joining AIT, he worked at IIT Kanpur as a lecturer and assistant professor (1989-94). He serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Geoinformatics and is a life member of Association for Geoinformation Technology and Indian Society of Remote Sensing. Prof Tripathi has authored over 232 peer-reviewed papers, Books, Book Chapters in the area of Geoinformatics applications for health, forest, environment, and marine and coastal zone monitoring, and has guided nearly 175 masters and 49 doctoral students. He is a recipient of the DAE Young Scientists Award (1994), AICTE Career Award (1996), and Osaka City University Distinguished Researcher Award (2007), as well as the Distinguished Alumni Award from NIT Warangal (2006).