Faculty Chairs
Irma and Ushakant Thakkar Chair
IIT Gandhinagar has developed a reputation for thinking outside traditional disciplinary boundaries, experimenting with various facets of education and fostering a culture of free inquiry and innovation. Exposing students to the diverse forms of India's cultural expressions is one of the distinctive features of an IIT Gandhinagar education.
In an effort to institutionalize some of the most successful curricular and extracurricular initiatives on cultural expression, IIT Gandhinagar has established the Irma and Ushakant Thakkar Chair in Sanskrit Studies.
The Chair will enable teaching of courses on Sanskrit language and literature. The Chair will also support inviting eminent scholars of Sanskrit to the Institute as visiting professors or scholar-in-residence for lectures, seminars, and other scholarly endeavors.
Endowment
Dr Ushakant Thakkar (Dr Kant Tucker) has established a generous endowment through the Dharma Civilization Foundation to support Irma and Ushakant Thakkar Chair at IIT Gandhinagar. Dr Thakkar is a Los Angeles area-based Nephrologist and a philanthropist. He is Chairman of the Dharma Civilization Foundation, a non-profit public charity based in Los Angeles, California. He also served on the faculty of UCLA, in the department of medicine. Dr Thakkar is a recipient of the “Spirit Award” in 2009, from the National Kidney Foundation, USA.