CTFC 2021

Dr. R. K. Shevgaonkar, Chief Guest

Dr. R. K. Shevgaonkar had been a Professor at Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay since 1990 and is presently Professor (emeritus). He has a rich experience in science and technology and administration of institutes of higher education. He has worked as Vice Chancellor of University of Pune (2010- 2011), Director of IIT Delhi (2011-2015) and Vice Chancellor of Bennett University (2018-2021). He had been visiting professor in several universities in USA and Europe also. He is known world over for his scientific contributions.

Prof. Shevgaonkar’s teaching and research areas include Strategic Planning, Optical Communication, Image Processing and Computational Electromagnetics. He played a key role in commissioning one of the world’s largest Decameter Wave Telescopes at Indian Institute of Astrophysics and Raman Research Institute, Bangalore. At his alma mater IIT Bombay, he played a visionary role in setting up a Centre to generate and disseminate the video and web lectures from experts in IIT. He also helped found Centre for Distance Engineering Education.

Prof. Shevgaonkar’s has received several awards, including IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award (2011), Headline Today’s Education Leadership Award (2012) and Devang Mehta Business School Award (2010).

Dr. Pradipta Banerjee, Keynote Speaker

Dr. Pradipta Banerji has been a Professor at Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Bombay since 1988. He is B.Tech. (Civil) from IIT Delhi and Ph.D. (Structural Engineering) from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, with a specialization in Earthquake Engineering. He has been till recently the Dean (Alumni & International Relations) at IIT Bombay. He has also played an important role in nurturing Centre for Urban Science and Engineering.

Prof. Banerji has been an expert consultant to many organizations in India and abroad, particularly in the fields of Earthquake Engineering, Vibration Control, Bridge Design and Structural Health Monitoring. He is a member of several professional societies and is a member of the executive council of the International Society for Health Monitoring of Intelligent Infrastructure. Furthermore, he is a member of the Committee for Capacity Building of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations under UNESCO, and a member of the African Science Committee under the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Dr. Sanjay Oak,
Plenary Talk

Dr. Sanjay N. Oak assumed is Vice Chancellor of a reputed University (Padmashree Dr D Y Patil Vidyapeeth) in Navi Mumbai. Dr. Sanjay Oak is a surgeon having specialisation in the field of Paediatric Surgery and Laparoscopy. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences. He was dean of Seth G. S. Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, Maharashtra. He has also served as Director of Medical Education and Major Hospitals for Medical Colleges and Hospitals under Municipal Corporation of Mumbai. He was recently appointed as the Chairman of Task force for COVID-19 in Maharashtra.

Dr. Oak is prolific writer in Marathi and weekly columnist of great repute.

Dr. Milind Kulkarni, Plenary Talk

Dr. Milind Kulkarni is a Civil Engineer with a specialization is in Environmental Engineering. He has 31 years’ experience in teaching, research, consulting and administration of Engineering Colleges. His areas of interest are water & wastewater, air pollution, sustainable development & solid waste management. He has visited US, UK, Germany, Argentina, UAE and Australia to present research papers. He was awarded Nawab Zain Yar Jung Award for best paper in Environmental Engineering by Institution of Engineers, India.

Dr. Kulkarni is presently the Director, Prachi Services and is involved in design and construction of Wastewater Treatment Plant, Water Treatment Plant, and Sewerage System. National Board for Accreditation (NBA), All India Council for Technical Education has appointed him as an expert to help engineering colleges in achieving NBA standards.

Dr. P. Sekhar,
Plenary Talk

Dr. P. Sekhar is the Chairman Global Smart Cities Panel (MEDC), Unleasshing India & Micro Tech Global Foundation. He has spent quite some time in giving shape to his concept of “secured governance” and illustrating the effectiveness and enormous boost this could give to the Indian Economy He has written several books including the one entitled “Secured Techno-Economic Growth of India- A Global Perspective: Unleashing Hidden Growth Potential”. Some of his books deal with potential of growth -oriented sectors, such as Highways, Railways, Industry, Tourism, Sports, Agriculture, Education, Power, Healthcare in different states of India.

Dr. Sekhar is PhD from BARC/ Mumbai University. He owns a range of intellectual property rights and has been a leading campaigner to focus on access to technology as the key to social change. He is also assisting various industries to efficiently use innovative technologies along with various funding support so as to contribute to the new Smart Cities initiative.

Dr. Saurabh Mehta, Plenary Talk

Dr. Saurabh N. Mehta is Chief Academic Officer and Professor at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai. In addition to teaching and research, he is responsible for integrating academia – industry collaborations, research programs, planning, and educational training.

Dr. Saurabh N. Mehta has about 20 years’ experience in research and teaching. He obtained his B.E., M.S. and PhD. degrees in Electronics Engineering from Mumbai University, Ajou University (South Korea) and Inha University (South Korea) in 2002, 2005, and 2011, respectively. His research interests are in the area of Wireless Networks, RFID / IoT / IoE Technology, Ubiquitous Computing, Game Theory, and Educational Technology. He is also working as an independent consultant in the area of Embedded System, wireless technology, education, and technical market research.

Dr. Priam Pillai,
Plenary Talk

Dr. Priam Pillai is an Associate Professor (Mechanical) at Pillai College of Engineering, New Panvel and is also the Chief Operating Officer of Mahatma Education (MES). He is PhD from MIT (USA).

He has developed several novel instruments for material testing. His research interests also include applications of GIS and remote sensing for development of maps that can be used for Urban planning. He is the founding partner of the Urban Expansion Observatory, a joint research initiative in Geospatial technologies between Mahatma Education Society and New York University. He is Director of Valectus Pvt. Limited, a geospatial analytics company that specializes in providing geospatial solutions to small and medium businesses as well as government agencies. The company was the winner of the Maharashtra State Innovation Society’s start-up award in 2020.

He has started many new initiatives at MES including launch of Pillai Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Google Apps for Education in the all (48) MES institutions, founded the Urban Expansion Observatory, numerous Industry-Institute Interactions, development and adaptation of open-source software and technologies for education and many others.

Dr. Pillai is the winner of numerous awards from the US government as well as private organizations. He was awarded the Gore Award for innovation by the Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies sponsored by the US Army, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow Award, the UC Berkeley Materials Science and Engineering Department Citation. In 2010, he received an outstanding service award for assisting the Boston police department and district attorney’s office in the use of thermal cameras in their investigations.

Dr. Korhan Cengiz, Plenary Talk

Dr. Korhan Cengiz (Senior Member, IEEE) is an Assistant Professor with the Electrical-Electronics Engineering Department, Trakya University, Edirne (Turkey). He received B.S. degree from Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, M.S. degree from Namik Kemal University, Tekirdag and the Ph.D. degree (Electronics Engineering) from Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Dr Korhan Cengiz has authored over 30 articles, five book chapters and one book in Turkish. His research interests include wireless sensor networks, wireless communications, statistical signal processing, indoor positioning systems, power electronics, and 5G. He serves several editorial positions in Springer, Elsevier and IEEE books and journals. He is Editor of the Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

Dr. Veerle Vandeginste, Plenary Talk

Dr. Veerle Vandeginsteis she is Associate Professor in Materials Engineering at KU Leuven (Belgium), where she contributes teaching in chemistry and material science, engineering and technology, and research on physical chemistry and behaviour of material interfaces. She graduated as a geologist in 2001 and obtained her PhD degree in Geology from KU Leuven in 2006. Then, she conducted research at the Geological Survey of Belgium and subsequently, at CEREGE (Aix-en-Provence, France). She joined the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London in 2009, and in 2012, she started there her own Diagenesis research group as an independent research fellow. In 2015. She joined University of Nottingham as an Assistant Professor in 2015, where she established the Geochemistry research discipline in the School of Chemistry. She moved to present position in 2020.

Dr. Veerle Vandeginsteis received several institutional and international awards, e.g. Arthur Holmes Centenary Research Award, QCCRSC Best poster prize, the Stephen E. Laubach Research in Structural Diagenesis Award, the GDL Foundation Research Fellowship. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Dr. Padmaja Joshi,
Plenary Talk

Dr. Padmaja Joshi is a Senior Director at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Mumbai and is heading Software Engineering Division. She is B.E. from C.O.E. Pune, M.E. from VJTI and Ph.D. from IIT, Bombay. Her areas of interest include blockchain technology, e-authentication, e-governance, object-oriented technology, mobile cloud computing, data anonymization and cyber security.

Dr Joshi is a member of Maharashtra State Committee on Enterprise Architecture, Software systems and applications for E-Governance and EBusiness Infrastructure, Strategy and planning committee for Blockchain Technology, Data Anonymization subcommittee of e-Governance standards and IEEE subcommittee for “Digital Identity”. She is also involved in national level projects on Appstore, Unified Blockchain Framework, e-Pramaan: An authentication framework, and on projects like m-Voting.