Dr. Purushottam Kashinath Kelakar (1909-1990) is best remembered as the founding director of IIT Kanpur, established in 1959. Born in Karnataka, he graduated in Physics from the Royal Institute of Science, Mumbai in 1931 and later obtained his Diploma in Electrical Engineering in 1934 from IISC, Bangalore. Pursuing his passion for studies, Dr. Kelakar earned his doctorate from the University of Liverpool under the guidance of Dr. J.C. Prescott. His association with IITs began in 1956 when he was appointed as the Planning Officer of IIT Bombay and later became its Deputy Director. In 1959 December, Dr. Kelkar was appointed as the first Director of IIT Kanpur. His vision was to establish an institute incorporating engineering curriculum based on science, humanities and social sciences, with faculty engaged in teaching and research. Dr. Kelkar was instrumental in forming a collaborative program between IITK and a consortium of nine American universities called the Kanpur Indo-American Program (KIAP) that played an important role in the development of the Institute. He was appointed as the Director of IIT Bombay in 1970 where he brought in many key changes that led to the growth and expansion of the Institute. To honor his immense contribution in the field of technical education, the Government of India honored him with Padma Bhushan in 1969.
Dr. Soumya Ranjan Sahoo is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. His current research interests include control of unmanned vehicles, multiagent systems, and coordinated control and its applications to aerospace and electrical systems. He is a recipient of Prof. J.N. Panda and Mrs. R. Panda Memorial Gold Medal for the Best Electrical Engineering Graduate (2008). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Systems and Control Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India.
Dr. Sagar Chakraborty is an Associate Professor at Department of Physics, IIT Kanpur. He specializes in the area of Nonlinear Dynamics, Chaos Theory, Evolutionary Game Theory, Turbulence. . He was a gold medalist in BSc (Physics Honours), 2003. He has been awarded INSPIRE faculty award (2013), NASI-Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award (2016), and Gopal Das Bhandari Memorial Distinguished Teacher Award (2018).He finished his PhD work in 2008 at SNBNCBS, Kolkata. Subsequently, he was an independent post-doctoral fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen.
Dr. Vaibhav Arghode is an Associate Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kanpur. His research interests are in the field of gas turbine combustion, heat transfer and thermal management, nano-energetics and gas-particle flows. He has published 1 book (Springer briefs), 2 book chapters, 39 journal papers and 41 conference papers and filed 1 Indian patent. He has completed/ongoing 11 sponsored projects (7 as PI). He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA in 2011 and later worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia-Tech, Atlanta, USA
