Advisory Board Members
Shri Nambi Narayanan is an Indian aerospace scientist who worked for the Indian Space Research Organisation. As a senior official at the ISRO, he was briefly in charge of the cryogenics division. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian award, in March 2019. He completed his schooling at Higher Secondary School, Nagercoil. He received a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai. After studying mechanical engineering in Madurai, he started his career in 1966 at ISRO as a technical assistant at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station. He was sent to Princeton University on deputation at Government of India‘s expense in 1969. He completed his master’s program there in chemical rocket propulsion under professor Luigi Crocco. He returned to India with expertise in liquid propulsion at a time when Indian rocketry was still solely dependent on solid propellants.
Prof. Sujatha Ramdorai
Sujatha Ramdorai is an algebraic number theorist known for her work on Iwasawa theory. She is a professor of mathematics and Canada Research Chair at University of British Columbia, Canada. She was previously a professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. She completed her B.Sc. in 1982 at St. Joseph’s college, Bangalore and then got her M.Sc. through correspondence from Annamalai University in 1985. After that she went for PhD at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and was awarded her PhD under supervision of Raman Parimala in 1992. Her dissertation was “Witt Groups of Real Surfaces and Real Geometry”. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of several international research agencies such as the Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Advanced Research, Banff International Research Station, International Centre for Pure and Applied Mathematics. She was a member of the National Knowledge Commission from 2007 to 2009.
She is at present a member of the Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Council from 2009 onwards and also a member of the National Innovation Council She is also on the advisory board of Gonit Sora. Ramdorai became the first Indian to win the prestigious ICTP Ramanujan Prize in 2006. She was also awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, the highest honour in scientific fields by the Indian Government in 2004. She is also the recipient of the 2020 Krieger–Nelson Prize for her exceptional contributions to mathematics research. She has been bestowed with the Padma Shri award by the Government of India for 2023 in the field of science and engineering.
Dr Nithin Nagaraj
Dr. Nithin Nagaraj has Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK, Surathkal, 1999), Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, New York, USA (2001) and PhD from National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru (NIAS, 2010). He has previously held positions at GE Global Research, IISER-Pune and Amrita University. He is currently — Associate Professor at NIAS, IISc. Campus, Bengaluru. His research areas include Brain-inspired machine learning, chaos and information theory, complexity theories of consciousness and causality. He has co-authored over 35 international peer-reviewed journal publications, 75 national & international conference paper presentations. He has delivered over 140 invited talks at various national and international forums. He is the co-inventor of 8 US patent applications (2 granted) and 1 Indian patent application. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an invited member of the Advisory Council of METI: Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence International, USA.
Dr Raghavendra Rao D
Dr Raghavendra is a spine surgeon at Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain hospital, where he is working as a consultant spine surgeon in the department of spine surgery, since 2016. The center now attracts patients with spinal disorders from all over the state and a few from across the country. The center has grown to be one of the main referral centers for complex spinal disorders, especially for patients with spinal deformities. At present, the centre has an average caseload of 800 spine surgeries per year. The focus of the centre is to achieve excellence in spine care and provide the best medical /surgical treatment to all patients with spinal disorders at affordable cost. Dr. Raghavendra completed his medical school at the well-known Bangalore medical college (Bangalore university, India) and then did his ms in orthopedics at Bangalore medical college. After finishing his post-graduation in 2007, he then went on to work in France at Institut Calot under Dr. Daniel Chopin as a fellow of spine surgery for one year. He has more than 15 years of experience in spine surgery. He is a member of Association of spine surgeons of India, Bangalore Orthopedic Society and Karnataka Orthopedic Association.
Shri Basavaraj Umarani
Basavaraj Umarani has overall 11 Years of IT experience with 9+ Years of hands-on executive with record of leading the Performance Engineering of products & applications, improving processes to drive quality and efficiency & 1.5 years of product functional testing. Specialist in requirement analysis, workload model, performance measurement strategy, assessing and tuning of products & applications in especially in performance. Vast expertise in web application, multimedia [chat] application, web service, API & batch. He works presently at Indian Development Foundation and has graduated from Dharwad, Karnataka University. Basavaraj Umrani discovered his love of mathematics at the age of eight. Various media houses and people around him recognised him for his extraordinary analytical skills. Basavaraj can perform addition and multiplication of large numbers within seconds, without any aid. He can also accurately tell us the time of the day and the weekday of any date between the years 1900 to 2100.
This visually-impaired but exceedingly sharp young man has rightfully been called ‘The Walking Computer’. Blind by birth but sharp & intelligent by determination, he has showcased the marvel of his sixth sense in the field of mathematics, and is an inspiration for many proving that disability is an ability and not a hindrance, for those who have will power. A long list of awards have found their way to Basavaraj Umrani, including local, state, and national awards.