HAL Chair

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., founded in 1980, is an Indian state-owned aerospace & defence company and is headquartered in Bangalore. Governed by the Indian Ministry of Defence, the company primarily works in the operations of the aerospace and also in designing, fabricating and assembly of aircrafts, jet engines, helicopters and their spare parts. Spread across India, its facilities are in Bangalore, Lucknow, Kanpur, Nashik, Hyderabad, Koraput, Korwa and Kasaragod.
Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., Lucknow, instituted HAL Chair for a period of three years to a faculty working in advanced research and multi-disciplinary problems in aircraft systems technology and its application.




Current Occupant


Dr. Arvind Kumar

June 2024- June 2027

Dr. Arvind Kumar is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. His research work focuses on solid-liquid phase change (melting/solidification) involving theoretical work, modelling and simulation, and experiments. Dr. Kumar also works in the areas of thermal spray surface coating technologies, and thermal storage and waste heat recover technologies. Dr. Kumar received his bachelor's degree (2001) in Manufacturing Engineering from NIFFT, Ranchi, master's degree (2003) and Ph.D. (2008) from IISc Bangalore. After graduation, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ecole des Mines de Nancy, France. He has worked in France for about three years before moving to the UK as a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Southampton.






Past Occupant


Prof. Bishakh Bhattacharya

Feb. 2021- Jan. 2024

Prof. Bishakh Bhattacharya, Department of Mechanical Engineering, specializes in the area of Vibration and Control, SHM, Sensors & Actuators, and his research interests are in the fields of Active & Passive Vibration Control, Active Shape Control and Adaptive Structures, Intelligent Gripper Design, Smart Structures, Structural Health Monitoring, Child-Robot Interaction Design, Neural Oscillation and Multi-scale Brain-modelling. He earned his doctorate from IISc Bangalore in 1998.