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 Kelkar (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. Kelkar 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.

Prof. Sudeep Kumar Ghosh

(May 2026-May 2029)

Prof. Sudeep Kumar Ghosh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at IIT Kanpur. His research interests encompass superconductivity and magnetism, topological order, and ultracold atoms. He earned his PhD in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and has made significant contributions to the theoretical understanding of complex quantum systems.

Prof. Umesh Madanan

(May 2026-May 2029)

Prof. Umesh Madanan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. His research interests lie in the field of experimental heat and mass transfer, wherein he has authored/co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed international journal and conference publications. His research group (Experimental Thermofluids Laboratory) at IIT Kanpur focuses on experimental approaches to understanding both fundamental and real-world problems in heat and mass transfer. These include, but are not limited to, thermal convection with/without porous media, pool boiling heat transfer enhancement, passive thermal management techniques such as heat pipes and thermosyphons, thermo-hydraulic performance augmentation in minichannel heat exchangers, and thermofluidics of supercritical fluids in compact heat exchangers. His group has designed and fabricated state-of-the-art research facilities for porous media thermal convection and pool boiling heat transfer and is also in the process of developing an experimental heat transfer loop to study thermofluidics of supercritical fluids in compact heat exchangers.

He was a recipient of the Scientific High Level Visiting Fellowship by Institut francais India - Embassy of France (2022) and the Max Planck-India Mobility Grant by Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG), Germany (2024-2026). He is an elected member of the Scientific Council for International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer, an Early Career Editorial Board member for Applied Thermal Engineering (Elsevier), an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (Springer Nature), and has also served as a guest editor for the ASME Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

Prior to joining IIT Kanpur as a faculty member, he received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Minnesota Twin Cities (2019), M.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras (2012), and B.Tech. (honors) in Mechanical Engineering from University of Calicut (2007). During the intermediate years between his academic pursuits, he gained industrial experience working at General Electric Power and Water (2012-2014) as an Edison Engineer and as an Assistant Manager (Product Development) at Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (2007-2009).

Prof. Ritika Gautam

(May 2026-May 2029)

Prof. Ritika Gautam from the Department of Chemistry at IIT Kanpur specializes in biological inorganic chemistry, metals in medicine, immunology, metal-based neuropharmacology, and self-assembled metal-complex nanoaggregates. She received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Arizona and pursued postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, California, before joining IIT Kanpur in 2019.

Prof. Avinash Lahgere

(May 2026-May 2029)

Prof. Avinash Lahgere from the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur, received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 2018. He specializes in semiconductor device modeling and circuit applications. Following his doctoral studies, he worked at GlobalFoundries, Bengaluru, from 2017 to 2022, developing SPICE models for semiconductor devices at various process nodes and earning multiple awards for his technical contributions. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and serves as Chairperson of the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) Chapter at IIT Kanpur, while also contributing to the IEEE EDS Compact Modeling Committee. Prof. Lahgere is the recipient of the Paired Early Career Fellowship in Applied Research (PECFAR) from the Indo-German Science & Technology Centre and has authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications. His research focuses on the development of compact models for semiconductor devices and their application in circuit design and simulation.

Prof. Priyanka Vijay Bagade

(May 2026-May 2029)

Prof. Priyanka Vijay Bagade is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur. She received her PhD from Arizona State University, USA. Her research interests include the Internet of Things (IoT), sensor systems, mobile computing, deep learning, and medical image analysis, with a focus on developing intelligent, data-driven solutions for smart and connected systems.

Prof. Sudarshan Narayanan

(May 2026-May 2029)

Prof. Sudarshan Narayanan from the Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering, has research interests in solid-state batteries (solid electrolytes and anode materials), thin films for energy conversion (including transparent conductors and low-emissivity coatings), and advanced materials characterization for energy applications. He received his B.Tech. in Engineering Physics from the IIT Madras in 2009, followed by his M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, in 2014.

Prof. Apparao Draksharapu

(Sep. 2025-Sep. 2028)

Prof. Apparao Draksharapu is the Associate Professor from the Department of Chemistry, IIT Kanpur. His research focuses on chemical transformations relevant to industry, particularly the design of synthetic metalloenzymes to catalyze biological reactions. His key research areas include emulating high-valent metal species in biological systems, employing advanced spectroscopic techniques to elucidate fundamental mechanisms, and developing strategies to control high-valent metal intermediates. His work offers critical insights for biomimetic catalysis and, more recently, for electrochemical energy applications.

He earned his master's from the University of Hyderabad, completed his Ph.D. at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota, USA.

Prof. Raghvendra Chaudhary

(Sep. 2025-Sep. 2028)

Prof. Raghvendra Kumar Chaudhary is the Associate Professor from the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur. His research focuses on advanced antenna technologies and applied electromagnetics, with specific interests in reconfigurable and multifunctional metamaterial antennas, MIMO systems, beam-steering array antennas, frequency-selective surfaces, phase-gradient metasurfaces, dielectric resonator antennas, and mmWave passive circuits.

He earned his M.Tech from IIT BHU, Varanasi, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. He has received multiple honors, including the NASI Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award, INAE Young Engineers Award, IETE Young Scientist Award, and the Institution of Engineers Young Engineers Award.

Prof. Supratik Banerjee

(Sep. 2024-Sep 2027)

Prof. Supratik Banerjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at IIT Kanpur. After completing B.Sc. (Honors in Physics) from Presidency College, Kolkata, he joined the prestigious Diplome d'Ingenieur program of Ecole Polytechnique (France) in 2007. He completed two Masters (in theoretical physics and in plasma physics) in 2011 and started his PhD with a prestigious AMX fellowship. In 2014, he successfully defended his thesis from Universite Paris-Sud (France) on compressible turbulence in space and astrophysical plasmas and bagged the Best Thesis Award. He joined IIT Kanpur in 2018 and since then he has been actively carrying out research in the field of fluid and plasma turbulence. He is the recipient of the DST INSPIRE faculty research grant. Two of his recent research works on turbulent relaxation of plasmas and binary fluids are featured in media.

Prof. Diptarka Das

(May 2024- April 2027)

Prof. Diptarka Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at IIT Kanpur. He works on theoretical physics, focussing on non-equilibrium physics, and string theory. He earned a dual degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and M.Sc. in Physics from BITS Pilani in 2010, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Kentucky in 2014, where he was awarded the Max Steckler Fellowship. He obtained a graduate fellowship at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara in 2014. Dr. Das conducted postdoctoral research at UC San Diego and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Potsdam. He has been appointed as the Head of Partner Group by the Max Planck Institute and has received the MATRICS research grant from the Science and Engineering Research Board, Govt. of India.

Prof. Purushottam Kar

(May 2024-April 2027)

Prof. Purushottam Kar is the Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. He specialises in the fields of Machine Learning, Optimization, Statistical Learning Theory and his research interests include Online and stochastic learning and optimization, Multi-label classification, High dimensional statistics, Kernel methods and Statistical learning theory. He completed his graduation and PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2008 and 2014 respectively. Dr. Kar has been the recipient of International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) Reviewer Award, 2015, Indian Unit of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence (IUPRAI) Doctoral Dissertation Award, 2014; Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges (Yahoo! KSC) Program Honourable Mention, 2012; Microsoft Research (MSR India) PhD Fellowship, 2010 and Academic Excellence Awards by IIT Kanpur for the years 2005, 2006.

Prof. Shubham Sahay

(May 2024-April 2027)

Prof. Shubham Sahay is an Associate 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.
Gratitude Video

Prof. Vipul Arora

(May 2024-April 2027)

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

(July 2022 - June 2025)

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.

Prof. Arjit Kundu

(July 2022 - June 2025)

Prof. 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

(July 2022 - June 2025)

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.

Prof. Shilpi Gupta

(July 2022 - June 2025)

Prof. 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.

Prof. Raju Kumar Gupta

(July 2022 - June 2025)

Prof. 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.

Prof. Sudharshana N. P.

(March 2022 - Feb. 2025)

Prof. 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.

Prof. Sudhanshu Shekhar

(March 2022 - Feb. 2025)

Prof. 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.