Prof. Amaresh Chakrabarti is a Senior Professor and current Chairman for the Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He has B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, M.E. in Design of Mechanical Systems from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and Ph.D. in Engineering Design from the University of Cambridge, UK. He led the Design Synthesis group at the EPSRC funded Engineering Design Centre at the University of Cambridge before joining IISc as an Associate Professor in 2001. His interests are in synthesis, creativity, sustainability, and informatics. He has published 16 books, over 300 peer-reviewed articles, and has 11 patents granted/pending. 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. In 2014, he co-initiated India's first Smart Factory R&D platform.
Prof. Ravi Poovaiah is senior faculty member at the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He has backgrounds in Mechanical Engineering, Product Design and Graphic Arts Education having studied respectively at IIT Madras and Bombay and at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, USA. His current pedagogic as well as research and design interests are in fields related to Interaction Design, New Media Design, Visual Design and Product Design and his research interests are in areas related to Visual Language, Information Visualisation, Visual Narratives, Way Finding Systems, Interaction Devices, Collaborative Social and Learning Environments and Designing for Children. He is involved with building digital resources related to ‘Design Learning’, 'Folk Tales', 'Interactive Systems', 'Designing for Children', 'Design of Way-finding Systems' and 'Design in India' with free and open access to networked information. He is also the co-director of a research project named COSMIC on experimenting with Social Media at IIT Bombay along with collaborative Institutes NTU and NUS in Singapore. Prof. Poovaiah has worked on projects with major industry leaders such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google India, Motorola India, Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Bharat Electronics Limited, Siemens India, among others.
Dr. Prasad Bokil is a mechanical engineer and communication designer with Master's and Ph.D. in communication design from IDC School of Design, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India. He teaches courses in typography and graphic design at undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels. His research interests are visual language, visual narratives and game design. He is currently working towards ‘design for wellbeing’. Dr. Bokil also worked as a Research Assistant at IDC, IIT Bombay, where he worked with a team of artisans at studio under guidance of Prof. A G Rao to enhance the packaging of some of the products. He is involved in several funded projects, including the Kanimuni project funded by MHRD under the Design Innovation Centre at IIT Guwahati. This project aims to develop educational games to build interest and confidence to learn English, Mathematics, Science and 21st century skills in school students. Dr Bokil has (co-)organised many conferences and workshops, including Typography Day 2013, Himalayan Languages Symposium 2016, ICoRD’17 in 2017, Type Design Workshop 2013, Game Design Workshop 2015, Design Research Workshop 2015, Workshop on Software product development process in Agile environment March 2015, Informatica 2016, Kanimuni: DIC Game Design Workshop 2016, etc.
Dr. Vivek Kant is an Assistant Professor at IDC School of Design, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India. He is an active researcher in the field of systems design, human factors (cognitive ergonomics/cognitive engineering), sociotechncial systems, and history and philosophy of design engineering. Dr. Kant pursued his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Dayalbagh Educational Institute, India in 2004, M.S. in Cognitive Science from University of Allahabad, India in 2008, M.A. in Psychology from University of Connecticut, USA in 2011, and Ph.D. in Systems Design Engineering from University of Waterloo, Canada in 2015. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and the Division of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, NTU along with Future Resilient Systems, Singapore-ETH Centre. He has also worked as an Assistant Systems Engineer for Tata Consultancy Services, India.
