Dr. Uday Shanker Dixit received his B.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Roorkee (now the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee) in 1987, M.Tech. and Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) in 1993 and 1998 respectively. He has worked for two companies— HMT, Pinjore and INDOMAG Steel Technology, New Delhi, where his main responsibility was designing various machines. Dr. Dixit joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT Guwahati), in 1998, where he is currently a professor. He was also the Officiating Director of the Central Institute of Technology, Kokrajhar from February 2014 to May 2015. Dr. Dixit has been actively engaged in research in various areas of design and manufacturing for 25 years. He has authored/co-authored 75 journal papers, 91 conference papers, 20 book chapters and 6 books on mechanical engineering. He has also co-edited 3 booksrelated to manufacturing. Of his 9 books, 6 have been published by Springer. He has guest-edited 10 special issues of journals. He is currently an associate editor of the Journal of the Institution of Engineers (India), Series C. Dr. Dixit has investigated a number of sponsored projects and developed several courses. Presently, he is the vice-president of the AIMTDR conference. Dr. Ravi Kant is an assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Ropar. Prior to joining IIT Ropar, he was an assistant professor at the College of Engineering Pune (COEP), which is one of the oldest and most respected institutes in India. He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak (Haryana). He completed his M.Tech. at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Guwahati with a specialization in "Computer Assisted Manufacturing", and worked on a project investigating the formability of adhesively bonded sheets. He also obtained his doctorate at IIT Guwahati, working on laser forming processes, including experimental studies, numerical simulations, soft-computing modeling and optimization. After his PhD, he worked on inverse estimation of unknown parameters and laser-assisted adhesive joining of metal to polymer sheets. His research interests include laser-based manufacturing, modeling and optimization of modern manufacturing processes, transmission welding, adhesive joining, inverse estimation, ultra-high speed machining.
