Founding Members and Directors
Three out of the five original reputed IITs (at Delhi, Kharagpur and Madras) came together for the purpose of creating this Not-for-Profit Section 8 company with their Directors as ex-officio founding directors of the company. The three Directors are :-
Prof. Valipe Ramgopal Rao
Prof. Valipe Ramgopal Rao is currently the Director, IIT Delhi. Before joining IIT Delhi as the Director in April 2016, Prof. Rao served as a P. K. Kelkar Chair Professor for Nanotechnology in the Department of Electrical Engineering and as the Chief Investigator for the Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics project at IIT Bombay.
Prof. Rao has over 450 research publications in the area of nano-scale devices & Nanoelectronics and is an inventor on 40 patents and patent applications, which include 15 issued US patents. Eleven of his patents have, been licensed to industries for commercialization. Prof Rao is a co-founder of two deep technology startups at IIT Bombay (Nanosniff & Soilsens) which are developing products of relevance to the society. Prof Rao is a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Indian National Science Academy.
Prof. Virendra Kumar Tewari
Prof. Virendra Kumar Tewari has been in the IIT system for the last 45 years from student to faculty. His field of specialization includes, Machinery Systems Design, Industrial Ergonomics and Safety, and Electronics & Computer Application in Farm Machinery Design. Professor Tewari is the recipient of several prestigious awards and accolades for his contributions in the field of farm mechanization and Precision Agriculture.
Prof. Tewari's administrative association at IIT Kharagpur has been for more than 15 yrs. in various capacities including the prestigious assignment of conducting IIT-JEE during 2003-2006, as Head of the Agricultural & Food Engineering Department during 2014-2017 and as Head of Rural Development Centre. He has a strong industry and academia relationship in the area of Tractor and Farm Machinery Design, Precision Agriculture, Climate Change, Water Resources and Food Process Engineering.
Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi
Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi is currently the Director Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi got his BTech in Electronics from IIT Madras in 1980, and his MS and PhD is Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara, in 1982 and 1985 respectively. After working at AT&T Bell Laboratories for a couple of years, he joined the faculty of IIT Madras, his alma mater, in 1986. He took over as Director, IIT Madras in September 2011.
His areas of specialisation are Communications and Signal Processing. His research work is in Wireless Networks, Modulation, Wireless Data, and Audio and Video Compression. He is currently also honorary Director of the Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology, a public-private initiative at the IIT-M Research Park to make India a wireless technology leader. He is on the Board of Bharat Electronics Limited. He is currently the Chairman of Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI).