IIT Kanpur instituted P.K. Kelkar Fellowship to honour its founding director, Dr. Purushottam Kashinath Kelkar. The Fellowship is awarded to young faculties, who are under 40 years and are doing ground-breaking research in their fields.
Dr. Purushottam Kashinath Kelakar (1909-1990) is best remembered as the founding director of IIT Kanpur, established in 1959. Born in Karnataka, he graduated in Physics from the Royal Institute of Science, Mumbai in 1931 and later obtained his Diploma in Electrical Engineering in 1934 from IISC, Bangalore. Pursuing his passion for studies, Dr. Kelakar earned his doctorate from the University of Liverpool under the guidance of Dr. J.C. Prescott. His association with IITs began in 1956 when he was appointed as the Planning Officer for IIT Bombay and later became its Deputy Director. In 1959 December, Dr. Kelkar was appointed as the first Director of IIT Kanpur. His vision was to establish an institute incorporating engineering curriculum based on science, humanities and social sciences, with faculty engaged in teaching and research. Dr. Kelkar was instrumental in forming a collaborative program between IITK and a consortium of nine American universities called the Kanpur Indo-American Program (KIAP) that played an important role in the development of the Institute. He was appointed as the Director of IIT Bombay in 1970 where he brought in many key changes that led to the growth and expansion of the Institute. To honor his immense contribution in the field of technical education, the Government of India honored him with Padma Bhushan in 1969.
Dr. Shubham Sahay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. He completed B.Tech in Electronics Engineering with four gold medals and several cash prizes from IIT (BHU), Varanasi in 2014 and Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in 2018. Dr. Sahay is a recipient of the IEEE Electron Devices Society Early Career Award and Young Associate of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in prominent IEEE journals and conferences. Dr. Sahay is a senior member of IEEE and the chair of IEEE EDS Kanpur chapter and has reviewed more than 125 articles.
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Prof. Vipul Arora is an Associate Professor at the department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, India. He received his B. Tech. (2009) and PhD (2015) degrees in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. He worked as a postdoc at Oxford University and then, as a research scientist at Amazon Alexa in Boston. He has held visiting researcher positions at TU Berlin, OVGU Magdeburg and Surrey University.
His research has immensely contributed to (i) audio representation learning for tasks such as audio search, audio event detection and audio annotation, (ii) human-machine learning for trustworthy machine learning with application to speech, music and audio analysis, (iii) generative machine learning for enhancing Monte Carlo simulations for statistical and particle Physics, and (iv) developing advanced learning-based tools to enhance air quality monitoring at scale.
Prof. Arghya Das, Department of Civil Engineering, research interests are Granular material mechanics, Flow through porous media, Constitutive modeling of geomaterials, Instability and bifurcation analysis, Rock Mechanics. He received his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2013 and later worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, Evanston, USA.
Dr. Arjit Kundu, Department of Physics, research interests are Equilibrium and non-equilibrium quantum transport, Topological systems in condensed matter. He did his PhD in 2012 from Heinrich-Heine University, Duesseldorf, Germany, MSc in 2010 Homi Bhabha National Institute (from Harish-Chandra Research Institute and BSc in 2007 from Calcutta University (Serampore College).
Prof. Nitin Gupta, Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering, research interests are Systems Neuroscience, Olfaction, Mental Health. Prof. Nitin Gupta graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2004 with a B.Tech. in Computer Science and joined the PhD program in bioinformatics and systems biology at the University of California, San Diego. After earning his PhD in 2009, he spent a few months in a cognitive neuroscience lab at UCSD, and then moved to the National Institutes of Health as a postdoc to learn electrophysiology. He returned to India in 2014 to start his research lab at IIT Kanpur. He is a recipient of many honors and awards such as the Swaranajayanti Fellowship, 2021 in Life Sciences from Department of Science and Technology, Excellence-in-Teaching Award, IIT Kanpur, 2019, The Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Fellow, 2016, Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award, DBT, 2015, Ramalingaswami Fellow, DBT, 2014.
Dr. Shilpi Gupta, Department of Physics, research interests are electromagnetic simulations, nanofabrication, optical microscopy, spectral and time-resolved measurements, and theoretical modeling of nanophotonic devices . Dr. Gupta graduated from IIT Delhi with a BTech in Engineering Physics. She then obtained MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, USA . Some key research contributions of her team include demonstration of a cost-efficient and portable spectrometer, a thin-film based beam-shaping device that is robust to optical misalignment, a remote diagnostic technique for detecting cracks in photonic crystals over large areas, a theoretical model to explain luminescence behavior of quantum dots, and a multi-parameter optimization scheme for ground-state cooling of a mechanical resonator mode using quantum dots.
Dr. Raju Kumar Gupta, Department of Chemical Engineering, research interests are photocatalysis, green synthesis of nanomaterials and surface chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from National University of Singapore in 2010. Dr. Gupta has been recipient of several fellowships and awards for his outstanding career in academic and research fields. Some of the fellowships and awards include DST Inspire Faculty Award 2013, IEI Young Engineer Award (2014-15), Young Scientist Award (2014-15), Young Faculty Research Fellowship 2018, and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) 2022.
Dr Sudharshana N P is Assistant Professor (English) at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kanpur. He has PhD from the English and Foreign Languages University (Formerly Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages), Hyderabad, India specializing in English Language Education. His main research interests are Applied Cognitive Semantics, English as a Second Language Studies and Materials Development.
Dr. Sudhanshu Shekhar Singh is an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur since December 2015. He earned his Ph.D. from Arizona State University, USA in 2015. He received his B. Tech degree in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur in 2008. After his undergraduate studies, Dr. Singh joined Tata Steel (Jamshedpur) and worked there for three years. The broad area of his research includes mechanical behaviour of materials at different length scales, 3D/4D materials science and laser assisted processing of materials. Dr. Singh has been awarded sponsored projects from various agencies (such as DST, SERB, ISRO). He has co-authored over 80 papers in international peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Singh is a recipient of several awards, including INYAS Member, NASI Young Scientist platinum jubilee award, Young Metallurgist of the Year by the Ministry of Steel, and IEI Young Engineer award.
