Pandit Ramchandra Dwivedi Chair
Mr. Kamalesh Dwivedi (BT/EE/1979) instituted the Pandit Ramchandra Dwivedi Chair. This chair is open to all departments of engineering and sciences at IIT Kanpur. Mr. Dwivedi is the President and General Partner at 3 Lines Venture Capital, based in Denver, USA. His current investment interests span a broad spectrum of technologies in early-stage startups in both the USA and India. Mr. Dwivedi has served as CIO for several major corporations, including Computer Vision, Scientific Atlanta, ADC Telecommunications, TeleTech Holdings (USA), and Bellsystem24 (Japan), during their transformative phases. As CIO, he was part of C-level teams that enabled multi-billion-dollar returns in portfolio companies of global private equity firms. Driving growth, leading turnarounds in large corporations, and mentoring employees have been among his most fulfilling professional experiences.He holds a B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, an M.Eng. from Carleton University, and has completed the Program for Management Development (PMD) at Harvard Business School.
Current Occupant
Prof. Santanu De
(Sep. 2025 - Sep. 2028)
Prof. Shantanu De from the department of mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur has research interest in turbulent combustion, spray combustion, flame dynamics, ignition, coal and biomass combustion, modeling of turbulent combustion, conditional moment closure method, stochastic methods and computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer. He received his M.Tech. from IIT Kanpur and his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Former Occupant
Prof. Abhijit Kushari
(Apr. 2022 - Apr. 2025)
Prof. Abhijit Kushari, Department of Aerospace Engineering, research interests are Aerospace Propulsion, Gas Turbine engines, Turbo-machinery, Liquid Atomization, Fire Dynamics, Flow Control and Combustion dynamics. He has established a state-of-the-art laboratory for research on Fire Dynamics and Aerospace propulsion at IIT Kanpur through active collaborations and partnerships with ADA, ADE, GTRE, CFEES, TBRL, ARDE, BARC, ISRO, Pratt and Whitney, GE Aviation, HAL, Airbus, HPCL, AR&DB, etc. He serves as member of various project review committees for multiple development programs of DRDO. He earned his doctorate from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000.