Dr. L. Venkatakrishnan completed his Master’s in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1991 and obtained his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science in 1997, before joining the Fluid Mechanics Research Laboratory (FMRL) at Florida State University as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Venkatakrishnan joined the National Aerospace Laboratories in June 2000 and is currently Chief Scientist and Head of the Experimental Aerodynamics Division and concurrently Professor, Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR). His main interests are in flow diagnostics, fluid mechanics and aeroacoustics, and he has developed new measurement methodologies as well as techniques for launch vehicle noise suppression. He has about 80 publications in international refereed journals and conferences in addition to numerous invited lectures in international conferences. He is a Indian National Academy of Engineering Fellow, Royal Aeronautical Society, UK Fellow, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Elected 2010) and has been awarded the Prof. Satish Dhawan Award for Young Engineers in 2011 in addition to the Best Innovation Award from CSIR-NAL in 2013.Prof. G. S. Bhat obtained his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay, Master’s of Engineering from IISc and Ph.D. from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IISc. His fields of interest include turbulent flows, tropical convection, cloud physics and dynamics, atmospheric boundary layer, laboratory modelling of atmospheric phenomena and ocean-atmosphere coupling. He has carried out laboratory simulation of cloud-like flows and field experiments over land and ocean. He was the Principal Investigator for the atmospheric component in the three Indian national observational monsoon experiments under the Indian Climate Research Program (ICRP), viz. the Bay of Bengal Monsoon Experiment (BOBMEX) carried out in 1999, the Arabian Sea Monsoon Experiment (ARMEX, 2002–05), the Continental Tropical Convergence Zone (CTCZ) experiment (2009–2015) and presently the Indian Principal Investigator of Indo-UK collaborative research program titled INCOMPASS. Dr. Sekhar Majumdar served the National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR) as a Senior Scientist from 1989 till January 2008 and retired as the Head of the Computational and Theoretical Fluid Dynamics Division at NAL. He now serves as a Senior Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering, NMIT Bangalore, and as the Head of CFD Centre of Excellence, NMIT Bangalore. Prof. Majumdar received his B.E. and M.E. both in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal Engineering College, Calcutta University, in 1968 and 1970, respectively. He then joined the CSIR, Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute Durgapur to work with the Fluid Mechanics Section and later with the Power Division of CMERI where he continued to work till 1983. Dr.Majumdar received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1981. He has more than 40 years of research experience in the country and abroad. He has published more than 100 technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineers, Fellow of the Aeronautical Society of India and Fellow of Institution of Engineers India. He is a member, International Committee of Asian Fluid Mechanics Congress, and life member of the National Society of Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power, India, and Indian Society of Technical Education.Prof. Jaywant H Arakeri is in the Faculty of the Mechanical Engineering department and the Centre for Product Design and Manufacture at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. All his education has been in Aeronautical Engineering, B.Tech. (IIT, Madras), M.E. (IISc) and Ph.D. (Caltech). His research is primarily focused on the fundamental understanding of various phenomena in fluid mechanics and heat transfer, in particular related to turbulence, transition to turbulence, unsteady flows, bio-fluid mechanics and evaporation from porous media. Some of the current questions being addressed in his lab relate to the role of turbulence in condensation and droplet growth in clouds; flows around flexible surfaces like fish tails and heart valves; instability of unsteady flows, including those with curvature, like those found in arteries; effect of gusts on insect flight; heat and moisture loss from soils and leaves and precision agriculture. He has written several popular science articles in Resonance. He is the Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and of the Indian Academy of Sciences.Prof. Ganesh Subramanian completed his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) in 1996. He went on to receive his doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering, from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2002, and thereafter, completed his postdoctoral research from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, at Cornell University, in 2005. He joined the Engineering Mechanics Unit, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in November 2005, as a Faculty Fellow (Assistant Professor), and is currently a Professor at the same institute. His research interests extend over a wide range of topics in fluid mechanics and transport phenomena. These include the dynamics and rheology of complex fluids such as suspensions, emulsions and polymer solutions, the dynamics and statistical mechanics of active matter, vortex dynamics and stability, atmospheric (the Ramdas layer) and oceanic (biogenic mixing) sciences. His research is regularly published in flagship fluid mechanics journals including the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. He has advised many Ph.D. and M.S. students, some of whom have gone on to become faculty members at the Indian Institutes of Technology.Prof. Ratul Dasgupta is a faculty member at the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay. His research interests are in the mechanics and thermodynamics of two-phase flows (interfacial waves) and amorphous materials. He received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Rourkela (formerly REC Rourkela) in 2001 and worked with the industry for a few years. He subsequently completed his Ph.D. from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research at Bengaluru working on the mechanics of hydraulic jumps on thin film flows, in 2011. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, from 2010 to 2013. Ratul has been on the Faculty of IIT Bombay since December 2013 where he supervises a small group of Master’s & doctoral students working on computational and analytical aspects of interfacial waves. He enjoys teaching courses related to mathematics, fluid dynamics and thermodynamics to graduate and undergraduate students at IIT Bombay. His group also collaborates with researchers at TCIS Hyderabad, ICTS Bengaluru and the IITs at Chennai, Hyderabad and Ropar.
