Dr. Vivek Kumar
HoD - Centre for Rural Development and Technology
IIT Delhi

Title of the Talk: TBA

Dr. Vivek, obtained his B.E. degree (1988-92) in Pulp & Paper Engineering, and M.E. degree (1992-94) in Chemical Engineering with specialization in Industrial Pollution Abatement. He completed his Ph.D. in 2000 (Thesis title: “Waste management for small scale Pulp & Paper Industry”) from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He was a Post Doctoral Fellow, IWT, Applied Science University, Wolfenbuttel, Germany from 2000-01. He has been involved in teaching and research in IIT Roorkee and IIT Delhi since 2004. He was a Visiting Research Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada from 2014/6-2014/7. He has been the recipient of many awards and honors including SRF Grant awarded from Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute for a proposal entitled ‘Novel Treatment Technology for High Salinity Water Using Membrane Distillation. He was elected International Director of Bio-Forest Product Division of American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) for three years from 2014-2017. Dr. Vivek has more than 18 years of research & development and academics experience on the development of low-cost technologies for the treatment of waste from medium and small industries. He has been involved in many research projects, mostly related to monitoring and treatment of industrial waste. He is a Project Investigator (PI) of the Indo-UK project entitled “Valorising Waste from Sugar Cane and Associated Industries via Innovations in Pre-treatment, Biotransformation and Process Intensification [vWa].

Dr. Susheel Kalia
Indian Military Academy, Dehradun
Ministry of Defence
Government of India

Title of the Talk: TBA

Dr. Susheel Kalia is a Professor & Head in the Department of Chemistry at Army Cadet College Wing of Indian Military Academy Dehradun, India. He was awarded GOC-in-C Commendation Card by General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Army Training Command, Shimla on 26 January 2018 for a positive approach, high level of motivation, outstanding qualities of leadership and sincerity towards the organization. He has been selected as a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Italy for the year 2020-21. He was also visiting researcher in the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering at the University of Bologna, Italy in 2013 and held a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Bahra University and Shoolini University, India until 2015. Kalia has around 82 research articles in international journals along with 13 books, 11 book chapters and around 7000 citations in his academic career. He has guided many MPhil. and Ph.D. students and delivered many invited talks at national and international conferences. His research interests include polymeric composites, bio- and nanocomposites, conducting polymers, nanofibers, nanoparticles, nanoferrites, hybrid materials and hydrogels. Kalia is an experienced book editor, and he has edited many successful books with Springer, Wiley and Elsevier. Kalia is the main editor of the "Springer Series on Polymer and Composite Materials", Springer International Publication, Switzerland and member of Editorial Board, International Journal of Plastics Technology, Springer India. In addition, he is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the Asian Polymer Association, American Chemical Society, Indian Cryogenics Council, the Society for Polymer Science, Indian Society of Analytical Scientists, and the International Association of Advanced Materials.

Dr. Swarnima Agnihotri
Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery
University of Borås, Sweden
Swedan

Title of the Talk: TBA

Dr.Agnihotri currently works as Senior lecturer at Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery, University of Borås, Sweden. She has completed PhD from IIT Roorkee, India. She received the postdoctoral fellowship for three years from Research Council of Norway and worked at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim to enhance the biorefinery process development in Norway. As a scientist, her expertise is in the field of Industrial Biotechnology, Biorefinery and Resource Recovery.
Since 2015, she had worked at University of Borås in different research projects in Biotechnology group and teaching the course Biotechnology to undergraduate and Masters Students. She has supervised 6 Masters Specialization projects and currently supervising 4 PhD students. Focus of her research has been on pretreatment processes of biomass for their valorization into a number of commercial products. She has also worked extensively on growing filamentous fungi on waste products, scaling up the process and their development into functional food and feed along with finding more interesting ways to valorize the biomass for a sustainable future. Currently she is working on to develop new climate smart proteins to be used in food and feed industry and to strengthen research and innovation collaboration by developing a test and demonstration environment in Europe. The project is funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Interreg IVB, North Sea Region Programme. She has around 15 publications in peer reviewed journals and has authored 3 book chapters. She is a reviewer for several international scientific journals such as Elsevier, Bioresource Technology, Bioengineered, Wood Chemistry and Technology, and BioResources. Her objective is to contribute to a sustainable future and a more conscious next generation through her research and teaching work.

Mr. J. P. Singh
Scientist G, Associate Director and Head - AI
IRDE, DRDO, Ministry of Defense, GOI, Dehradun

Title of the Talk: TBA

Mr. Singh, obtained his B.E. in Electronics Engineering from MMMUT, Gorakhpur in 1992 and MBA in Technology Management from BIM, Trichy in 1999. He joined DRDO's Electronics Fellowship Course in 1992 at DIAT, Pune where he completed an Artificial Neural Network project on object detection in SAR images. He joined IRDE as Scientist B in September 1993. He started his work in the area of Thermal Imaging and worked in the team which developed indigenous Thermal Imager named “SATHI”. Then he worked as a member in DRDO Task Force on Sensor Fusion. As a GFAST member, he prepared DRDO S&T Roadmap in year 2008 and Nanophotonics Report in 2010. From 2010 till date, he has focused on AI & Machine Learning and developed VIPERS automatic object recognition system in 2018. VIPERS-AD (Anti Drone) and VIPERS-HD (Human Detection) versions are being tried by various defence forces. At present, he is working on various AI projects at IRDE (DRDO) as Group Director (AI) and Scientist G. He has been awarded two patents one on machine learning and other on Defence Wall system. He obtained a software copyright and a book copyright for his book on Nanophotonics. He has authored two more books one on Artificial Intelligence and other on Machine Learning both published as kindle versions at amazon and as print versions from Yourpedia and published several research papers in International Journals & Conferences. He is a member of IEEE & OSI. As a hobby, he has got FIDE Arena International Master (AIM) title in chess. He has been awarded Lab Scientist of the year award in year 2004 from DRDO and two awards from BARC, Trombay.

Dr. Viabhav Gupta
Sr. Technical Officer
IRDE, DRDO, Ministry of Defense, GOI, Dehradun

Title of the Talk: TBA

Dr. Gupta, obtained his M.Sc. in Computer Science from MD University, Rohtak in 2002, M.Phil. Computer Science from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai in 2005 and P.hD. in Computer Science Engineering with Specialization in Neural Networks from Uttarakhand Technical University, Dehradun in 2021. DRDO He joined DRDO in 2002 at DRDO Delhi where he played lead role in major routing centre and developed intelligent mail server and routing tables. He joined DRDO premium electro-optical laboratory IRDE Dehradun in June 2005. He started his work in the area of automation and developed AI based algorithms for detection and tracking, Bad weather imaging, generative image reconstruction, passive ranging and super resolution for electro-optical systems. In 2016 he made significant achievement in the development of AI based battle tank detection system using artificial neural network approach for implementation of smart mines. During COVID Pandemic he has developed an intelligent system for fever detection from a safer distance using thermal imager among the crowd instantly for multiple persons. His important contributions includes development of automated VIPERS-HD for human detection during day/night conditions. Successful night trials were also conducted in Ladhak region at -25 celcius. In continuation to this VIPERS-AD (Anti Drone) has been developed with the capability to detect, track and classify miniature size flying object and UAV in the sky even in the pitch dark conditions using trajectory, acoustic and spatial models. As an eminent designer he has pushed himself beyond limits and achieved significant success in the development of AI based DRONE surveillance model to autonomously detect and classify various objects on the ground surface in the battle field region. He has also conceptualized a model for dropping of payload release mechanism using remote control operation or autonomously mounted on Drone. In his recent contributions he has also achieved facial recognition of humans from a substantial height through the optical sensor mounted on a flying Drone. The succesful trials were conducted at Uttrakhand Police Headquaters facility in Dehradun. He has been awarded patent for his contributions and published many research papers in the journals & conferences of high repute. He has been awarded DRDO Laboratory award for his outstanding contributions in the development of AI based systems in the year 2021.