Pavitar Joneja Chair
Dr. Dev Joneja instituted the Pavitar Joneja Chair in the Humanities and Social Science Department at IIT Kanpur in honor of his mother, Smt. Pavitar Joneja. This Chair promotes excellence in research and leadership in the broad disciplines including; English, Fine Arts, Philosophy, Psychology & Sociology. Dr. Dev Joneja (BT/ME/1984) is currently the Chief Risk Officer at Exodus Point Capital Management. Previously, he was the Global Head of Risk and Analytics at Millennium Management LLC and has also served as its Senior Managing Director. Prior to joining the firm in 2009, Dr. Joneja was at Lehman Brothers for 13 years, and served as the Head of Fixed Income Research and as the Global Head of Lehman Indices and Point. He has also served as a Research Analyst at Barclays Capital and as a faculty at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University in New York.
Current Occupant
Prof. Munmun Jha
(Sep. 2025 - Sep. 2028)
Prof. Munmun Jha from the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kanpur has research interest in Human rights issues, NGOs, social movement and caste and race. He is recipient of Human Right Millennium Award conferred by the Indian Institute of Human Right, New Delhi. He completed his M.A. and M.Phil from JNU, Delhi and Ph.D. Glasgow University, Glasgow, UK.
Former Occupant
Prof. Braj Bhushan
(Apr. 2022 - Apr. 2025)
Dr. Braj Bhushan is a professor of psychology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. His areas of research include Cognitive Neuropsychology, Cognitive Ergonomics, Trauma Psychology. He is Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, USA and a Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society. His major areas of work are affective processes and assessment, within which he has extensively worked on development and validation of various databases, further examining its application using behavioural as well as neuropsychological methods. He earned his doctorate from Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University, India in 2003.