Prof. Gadgil is a Faculty Senior Scientist and was the Director of the Energy and Environmental Technologies Division from 2010-2015 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is also a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. Prof. Gadgil specializes in heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and design for development. His work experience expands to technical, economic, and policy research on energy efficiency and its implementation, particularly in developing countries. His inventions such as the Berkeley-Darfur Stove (which is being deployed in Darfur by the nonprofit Potential Energy) and UV Waterworks, a technology to inexpensively disinfect drinking water, have been used extensively in developing countries.

Profile
Prof. Gadgil has won numerous awards and honors for his inventions, including the Heinz Award for the Environment (2009), Sustainability Pioneer Awardâ from SAG/SAM of Zurich (2010), The European Inventor Award, and the NCIIA Lifetime Award for teaching innovation (both 2011), and the Zayed Future Energy Prize, and the Lemelson-MIT Global Innovation Award (both 2012). He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013. In 2014, Prof. Gadgil was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The American Physical Society Forum on Physics and Society also conferred upon Prof. Gadgil its Leo Szilard Lectureship Award. Prof. Gadgil holds a Ph.D. in Physics from University of California, Berkeley. IITK conferred upon Prof. Ashok Gadgil the Distinguished Alumnus Award, 2020.

Awards and Honors

• Curry Stone Design Prize. Inducted in the "Social Design Honoree Circle" 2017 cohort of honorees of the Curry Stone Foundation, for design under resource scarcity.
• R&D100 Award for invention of a novel, inexpensive, and robust technology for Fluoride-remediation of groundwater. The R&D100 Awards, called the “Oscars of Industrial Innovation”, are an international annual competition and celebrate the 100 top technology advances of the past year (2016)
• Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society for "outstanding accomplishments in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society."
• Elected as Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) (2015), Inducted in National Inventors Hall of Fame (2014)
• Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water—Creativity category—team award (2013) Inducted in the US National Academy of Engineering (2013).
• Winner of The Tech Awards in Economic Development category, team award for the Berkeley-Darfur Stove (2013) Alumni Leadership Award by the IIT Kanpur Alumni Association of Silicon Valley (2013).
• Lemelson-MIT Prize Award for Global Innovation (2012)
• Zayed Future Energy Prize Individual category (2012)
• European Inventor Award with Vikas Garud awarded by the European Patent Office[4] awarded by the European Patent Office (2011)
• The 15th Annual Heinz Award with special focus on the environment (2009)
• Breakthrough Award by Popular Mechanics—for Berkeley-Darfur Stove (2007)
• Winner of The Tech Awards in Health category, Laureate for UVWaterworks (2004)
• Popular Science—best of what is new (1996)
• Discover Award for UVWaterworks (1996)
• Pew Fellowship in Conservation and the Environment (1991)