Amaresh Chakrabarti is Senior Professor and current Chair for the Department of Design and Manufacturing (formerly Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. He has BE in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, ME in Design of Mechanical Systems from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and PhD in Engineering Design from the University of Cambridge, UK. He led for ten years the Design Synthesis group at the EPSRC funded Centre of Excellence called the Engineering Design Centre at University of Cambridge before joining Indian Institute of Science as an Associate Professor in 2001. His interests are in synthesis, creativity, sustainability, and informatics. He published 23 books, over 300 peer-reviewed articles, and has 13 patents granted/pending. He co-authored DRM, a methodology used widely as framework for design research. He has been an Associate Editor, AI EDAM & Design Science Journal (Cambridge University Press), Area Editor, Research in Engineering Design, Regional Editor, Journal of Re-manufacturing (Springer), and Advisory Editor for eight Journals including Clean Technologies & Environmental Policy (Springer), and Journal of Engineering Design and International Journal of Design Creativity & Innovation (Taylor & Francis). He has been on the Advisory Board and the Board of Management of the Design Society, UK; member of the CII National Committee on Design India; member of the Jury of India Design Mark; and member of the CII Smart Manufacturing Council India. He founded IDeASLab - India's first Design Observatory. He is the Founding Programme chair for International Conference Series on Research into Design (ICoRD), Conference Chair for the 22nd CIRP Design Conference 2012 and the 3rd International Conference on Design Creativity 2015 (3rd ICDC) and vice-Chair for AI in Design and Design Computing & Cognition Conferences. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Engineering Designers, the highest honour of the peer society under the UK Royal Charter in engg design, and TUM Ambassador Awardee from TU Munich Germany. Twenty-two of his papers won top paper awards in international conferences. In 2014, he co-initiated India's first Smart Factory R&D platform. He also heads the IISc-TCS Innovation Lab, the IISc Press, and the Springer International Book Series on Design Science & Innovation. He received J Nehru Doctoral Fellowship for University of Cambridge, UK (1987), ORS Award by Committee of Vice-Chancellors, UK (1987), Lundgren Award, University of Cambridge (1991), UK MG MIAA Commendation Award (1994), etc. He also received IISc's Alumni Award for Excellence in Research in Eng (2022). He is the current Editor-in-Chief of AI EDAM Journal (CUP).
Vishal Singh is Associate Professor in the Department of Design and Manufacturing (formerly Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru. He has previously worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Aalto University, Finland, besides a brief stint as Director, Innovation at the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences where he led the Research & Development strategy for the Data-Driven Construction Innovation Hub. He has also worked in Australia as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University and as a Research Assistant at the University of Newcastle. Vishal's research and teaching builds on design thinking, computational thinking, and systems thinking. He also conducts research on digitalisation and construction informatics, looking at the products, processes, people and policy aspects of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) approaches, complemented by his research on design and construction innovation. Vishal also serves on the scientific committee of several international conference series across engineering design, product informatics and lifecycle management. Prasad Onkar is currently Associate Professor and Head, Department of Design at IIT Hyderabad, He did his Ph.D. from the Department of Design and Manufacturing (formerly Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing), IISc Bengaluru. He holds a Master of Technology degree in Product Design and Manufacturing from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Belgaum, Karnataka, and a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Karnatak University, Dharwad, Karnataka. Prior to joining IIT Hyderabad, he was Assistant Professor at the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati. He was also a visiting Researcher at Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. He has established Interactive Digital Reality and Applications (INDReA) laboratory at IIT Hyderabad which is engaged in cross-domain Design, Research and Development of interactive systems. He has published in reputed national and international journals and conferences. His research areas include, design process and methodologies, product design, interaction design, virtual reality, design for additive manufacturing, and haptics, among others. He is also a member of the Rural Development Center at IIT Hyderabad. Mohammad Shahid is Associate Professor at the Department of Design, IIT Hyderabad. He holds a Ph.D. in Design from IIT Guwahati, where he also served as a Teaching Assistant for five years. He earned his M.Des. in Visual Communication from IIT Guwahati and a B.Des in Textile Design from NIFT Kolkata. With a diverse background that includes experience in the textile industry and academia, Dr. Shahid's research focuses on cultural heritage, experimental typography, and visual culture. He has published extensively on these topics, particularly in the context of Bollywood movie posters and their visual rhetoric. Among his notable achievements, Dr. Shahid designed the NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) logo, which is widely recognized across educational institutions in India. He has also been recognized with several awards, including Best Typography Poster Design at Typography Day 2017, 2021 & 2023, Teaching Excellence Award 2022 at IIT Hyderabad, and Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Creativity and Cognition in Art and Design 2017. His teaching interests include graphic design, type design, and visual branding, among others.
