Dr. A. K. Lakshminarayanan holds a PhD in Manufacturing Engineering from Annamalai University, in the area of welding of ferritic stainless steel. He received the Best Faculty Award from the Mechanical Engineering department for the years 2013–14, 2014–15, and 2015–16. His areas of specialization include materials joining, surface engineering, advanced metal forming processes, fatigue, and stress corrosion cracking of welds. He has published more than 50 research papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and his research work has been presented at over 30 international and national conferences. Dr. Lakshminarayanan is also a reviewer for various international journals. He has successfully completed a sponsored external project on ‘Developing FSW tools to weld stainless steels’, funded under the Government of India’s DST young scientist scheme. Dr. Sridhar Idapalapati is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is a Cambridge Nehru Scholar and holds a PhD in Mechanics of Solids from the University of Cambridge and a first class honours (HMT Gold Medal recipient) degree in Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), India. Prior to joining the NTU, Dr. Idapalapati worked as a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA. His research interests include design with sandwich structures, composite materials, powder consolidation, biomaterials, and hard-tissue implants. Recently, he has also begun working on wind energy. He has published more than 70 papers in international journals, and seven book chapters. Dr. M. Vasudevan received his PhD in Metallurgical Engineering from the IIT Madras, India. He currently holds the position of Section Head, Advanced Welding Processes and Modeling Section, Materials Technology Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam. He is also a Professor at the Department of Atomic Energy, Homi Bhabha National Institute. He is an expert in the area of welding nuclear structural materials, and modeling weld phenomena. He has published more than 120 research papers in international journals, and received the Metallurgist of the Year award from the Indian Institute of Metals in 2016.
