Prof. Gopal Shankar Upadhyaya joined the department of Metallurgical Engineering (now Materials Science and Engineering) at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur as a Professor in 1976. Prior to that he was Associate Professor at the University of Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee) from 1964-1975. He was awarded a doctorate degree from the Kiev Institute of Technology, Ukraine in 1969 under the guidance of internationally renowned Materials Scientist Professor G.V. Samsonov. Professor Upadhyaya's publications list exceeds 300 papers and 16 authored/edited books. He has served on the Advisory Boards of practically all the major conferences and journals in powder metallurgy. Prof. Upadhyaya instituted Sansonov Memorial International Lecture Series in memory of his PhD advisor, Prof. G.V. Samsonov.

Professor Grigorii Valentinovich Samsonov (15 February 1918) was born near Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). After completing his first degree at the Nonferrous Metals Institute in Moscow, he served in the Soviet Navy during the Second World War. Following the war, he resumed research under Professor M. A. Merson at the Institute of Steel and Alloys, Moscow, and later joined the Institute of Metalkeramika (later the Institute of Materials Problems) of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, where he became Deputy Director and also headed the Powder Metallurgy Department at the Kiev Institute of Technology.
Samsonov made pioneering contributions to the study of refractory compounds and inorganic materials, particularly their structure-property-processing relationships. His work covered carbides, nitrides, borides, silicides, germanides, selenides, and phosphides, as well as hard cermets. A highly prolific scientist, he authored nearly 1500 research papers and edited or wrote around 50 books and monographs, including the influential Configurational Model of Matter. His students and collaborators are spread across the world.