Dr. B. Venkatraman
IGCAR
Prof. Krishnan Balasubramaniam
IIT Madras
Dr. Shyamsunder Mandayam
GE Global Research
Shri Umakanthan Anand
Reliance Industries Limited
Panteleev graduated from the Perm State Technical University in 2006. Since 2007 he works at the Institute of Continuous Media Mechanics Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (ICMM UB RAS). From 2019Ivan Panteleev is head of the Core Facilities Center “Research of materials and matter” at the Perm Federal Research Center Ural Branch Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2010 he got his PhD thesis.
Panteleev Ivanis well known scientist in experimental mechanics. His main research interests are related to the nonlinear behaviour of material and acoustic emission application for study of damage accumulation in heterogeneous materials.He has more than 150 scientific papers(of which 52 publications, according to Scopus, in international peer-reviewed scientific journals).
M.K.Asthana presently working as General Manager ( New Initiatives - Welding Research) in NTPC Limited, joined NTPC in the year 1986 as Executive Trainee - XI batch immediately after graduation.
He did Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, MESRA, RANCHI & graduated in 1986 with distinction.
In NTPC in his initial 12 years of his career, he worked at RIHAND, RAMAGUNDAM & Panipat Refinery Captive Power Project un Field Quality Assurance and in the year 1998 he got the opportunity to work in Corporate Quality Assurance in Engineering Office of NTPC at NOIDA. He developed immense interest in Welding & NDT - specially Ultrasonic Testing & acquire qualifications.
Immediately after joining he was selected in the first batch to do full time M.Tech in Power Generation Technology from IIT Delhi
After M. Tech in December 1999, he was re-inducted in CQA & assigned greater responsibilities. He gained valuable experience in technical specification finalisation, quality assurance & inspection of mechanical items of thermal power plant based on sub critical, super critical & ultra super critical technology. He visited to several manufacturer work places for assessment, manufacturing quality plan, welding & NDT Procedures finalisation as well inspection.
By this process he gained in depth understanding & knowledge of manufacturing processes, welding & NDT
Based on his valuable experience & knowledge in the field of Welding & NDT, last year he was elevated to the rank of General Manager and given the very challenging role of New Initiatives - Welding Research, in which he his working a different fronts - mainly categorised as Skill Development, Advance NDT training & certification, failure analysis due to welding, developing blue print for Welding Training Centers & World class Welding Research Center of NTPC and metallurgical, Welding & NDT aspects of AUSC
He is interacting with various internationally & nationally renowned industries in Welding & NDT, involving them in various roles & trying hard to develop a wonderful relationship & understanding with Welding & NDT industries in order to meet the assigned role.
Viktor Klein is the head of product management and sales with GE Inspection Robotics. Viktor studied automotive and aeronautical engineering in Munich, Germany and Madrid, Spain. He started his career in the automotive industry, working for BMW, Rolls Royce and the Formula 1. In 2010 he moved to Switzerland joining ALSTOM, where he was leading the global NDT field service team. After implementing several new automated inspection technologies he changed sides, from a user to the manufacturer, and joined Inspection Robotics.
Dr. Avinash Uddhav Sonawane joined the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) in 1987 after his completion of Post-Graduation in Physics from the Department of Physics, University of Pune. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of Mumbai. He is presently acting as Head of the Directorate of Regulatory Affairs & Communications (DRA&C) of AERB. DRA&C is mainly responsible to prepare and review regulations and documents on radiation safety in handling of ionising radiation sources for societal benefits, establish technical cooperation and liaison with academic institutions/professional bodies on nuclear and radiation safety matters, communications & spreading wide awareness and education regarding radiation safety among users of ionising of radiation sources. He has been empanelled as Assessor by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) for Medical Imaging Services (MIS). Dr. Sonawane is a recipient of the Gold Medal of Indian Nuclear Society (INS) for his significant and outstanding contribution in establishing regulatory framework for ensuring safe usages of radiation sources in the country. He has been honored by ISNT, Mumbai Chapter with NDT Achievement Award -2013 for Training/Education. He is the national point of Contact (PoC) in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, for the safety and security of radiation sources and IAEA-ITDB programme. He was recently involved by IAEA as an Expert for carrying out IAEA-IRRS mission to South Africa.
Prabhu Rajagopal is Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and an Associate of the Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation at IIT Madras (IITM). After graduating from IIT Madras in 2003 with a Dual Degree Masters in Mechanical Engineering specializing in Intelligent Manufacturing, he obtained his PhD in Ultrasonic NDE from Imperial College London, UK in 2007. As a post-doctoral researcher, he developed advanced computational tools for inspection of welds on a Rolls Royce funded project, also at Imperial (2008-2010). Joining IITM in Dec 2010, Dr. Rajagopal is currently Principal or CoInvestigator about 12 agency and industry sponsored projects, with a total value of over 10 Crore INR (about half of that as PI), and has contributed over 100 technical articles in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings and 9 Indian patent filings. He serves on the editorial board of ISNT Journal of NDE and is the Principal IITM Member on National Standardization Committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards and engages actively with industry. His areas of interest include strategies for inspection of structures under challenging conditions, and high resolution ultrasonic imaging using structured and topographic metamaterials. His research is strongly collaborative and international, with joint projects/publications with groups from universities such as Swinburne UT, Australia (with whom he has a joint PhD student), U.Nairobi Kenya (joint PhD), NTU Singapore, ZUT Poland, U. Warwick UK, U. Bordeaux France, MSU USA and ETS Montreal, Canada. He is a co-founding Director of the underwater and submersible robotics StartupPlanys Technologies Pvt. Ltd which licenses his IP filing on automated submerged pipeline inspections. His work has been recognized by the Indian Society for NDT through the National Young Scientist Award and the Institution of Engineers (India) through the National Design Award, both for the year 2016. More recently, he was awarded the prestigious ISSS Young Scientist Award by Institute of Smart Structures and Systems, IISc Bangalore, in recognition of his work on robotic NDE & SHM. He is co-recipient of the prestigious DRDO Academy Excellence Award for ‘Outstanding and Internationally recognized contribution in the field of NDT in collaboration with DRDO Laboratories leading to innovative and implementable products for DRDO Stakeholders’ as an Associate of the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, IIT Madras (Award for year 2015, received in April 2017)
O.Plekhov graduated from the Perm State Technical University in 1996. Since 1997 he works at the Institute of Continuous Media Mechanics Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (ICMM UB RAS). From 2014 Professor Oleg Plekhov’s is deputy director (scientific director) of ICMM UB RAS. In 2000 he got his PhD thesis and habilitated in 2009. In 2015 he was elected as professor of Russian Academy of Sciences.
Plekhovis well known scientist in solid mechanics. His main research interests are related to the thermodynamics of plastic deformation and fracture of structural materialsand infrared thermography application for study of damage accumulation and crack propagation. He has carried out a fundamental studies of the processes of energy dissipation and storage in metals; obtain new results concerning dissipative and strength properties of nanostructured materials;proposed methods for express evaluation of the fatigue limits;obtain new theoretical and applied results concerning metal fracture in gigacyclicfatigue.As a result of extensive work during last 20 years he has created a new scientific direction in the ICMM UB RAS devoted to the development of theoretical, experimental and numerical methods for study thermodynamics of deformation and failure.
The work done in the above research field has led to more than 230 scientific papers (of which 120 publications, according to Scopus, in international peer-reviewed scientific journals). The interest from the international scientific community can be estimated by h-index equals 16 with more than 1000 citations in total according to Russian citation index. Many times professor Plekhov was invited to deliver plenary and invited lectures in international and All-Russian conferences. Oleg Plekhov is a member of the Russian national Committee on theoretical and applied mechanics, vice-chairman of Russian committee of European society of structural integrity. He is member of the editorial boards of foreign (“FratturaedIntegritàStrutturale: The International Journal of the Italian Group of Fracture” (ISSN 1971-8993)) and Russian scientific journals (“Diagnostics, Resource and Mechanics of materials and structures” (ISSN 2410-9908), “Geosystems of transition zones”). He is expert of Russian academy of sciences and Federal Research Centre for Projects Evaluation and Consulting Services. He is a member of expert committee of Russian scientific fond. He participates in the dissertation Councils D 004.012.01, D 212.188.08.
Professor Oleg Plekhov has successfully managed numerous projects funded both by Russian fund for basic research, council on grants of the President of the Russian, Perm region and private and state companies. He has experience in applied research carried out with MotovilikhinskieZavody PJSC, Aviadvigatel JSC, and some others industrial partners.
G levin joined vikram sarabhai space centre, trivandrum in 1983 after completing his graduation in mechanical engineering from college of engineering, trivandrum. Presently he is the deputy director of solid propulsion & research entity, vssc. He is an expert in the field of solid propulsion and ndt of solid propulsion systems.
He is an active member of various scientific bodies. He was the preisdent of indian society for advancement of materials and process engineering(isampe), trivandrum chapter and indian society for non-destructive testing(isnt), trivandrum chapter. . He is also an executive council member of high energy materials society of india (hemsi), trivandrum chapter. He is a life member of aeronautical society of india, astronautical society of india etc.
He has many national and interantional publications to his credit
Dr. Ravibabu Mulaveesala was born in Chukkavanipalem, Andhra Pradesh, India. He received the B.Sc. Degree in Electronics from the Maha Raja College in 1996, the M.Sc. Degree in Electronics from Nagarjuna University in 1998, the M.Tech. Degree from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli, in 2000, and the Ph.D. Degree from the Centre for Applied Research in Electronics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, in 2006. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar, Punjab, India. His research interests include development of thermal, acoustical, and optical non-invasive/non destructive testing technologies for bio-medical and industrial imaging applications. He serves on the editorial/advisory boards of several refereed journals of the Institute of Physics (IoP), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and Elsevier publishers.
Uday Godbole is a founder-director of Technofour, a high-technology company that pioneered eddy current systems in India almost half a century ago.
He graduated in electrical engineering from IIT, Bombay in 1972 and founded Technofour along with three other classmates soon after. He is responsible for all research and development in eddy current instrumentation and software at Technofour group. Technofour's product range includes metal sorters, online and offline systems for inspection of welded and seamless tubes, in-service inspection sysetms for nuclear steam generators, portable bluetooth enabled devices etc. The latest Technofour products are all Industry 4.0 ready. The group has several patents and three presidential awards for import substitution to its credit.
Mr. Diwakar Joshi, Director, Insight Quality Services (working in the field of Training, Consultancy, Inspection and NDT services) and Insight Global FZE, U.A.E., is basically a mechanical engineer having more than 40 years’ experience in QA/QC and NDT field. He has worked with prestigious organizations like Walchandnagar Industries Ltd., Alfa Laval India Ltd., PT. Puspetindo, Indonesia and PT. Balcke-Durr Indonesia.
He is a qualified Lead Assessor for ISO 9000, qualified ASNT Level III in RT, UT,MT,PT,VT,LT,ET, ACCP Level III, Senior Certified Welding Inspector of AWS, API 510, API 653, API 570, API 571, API 577, API 580 Inspector, API 936 Refractory Practitioner, API Source Inspector Fixed Equipment and API Tank Entry Supervisor.
He is a member of many institutes, like BINDT, AWS, ASNT, ASM, SWS, ISNT and NCB. He has many national and international papers to his credit and is currently the Vice President of Indian Society for Non-Destructive Testing (ISNT). Mr. Joshi is an approved member of ICNDT – WG1, (International Committee for Non-Destructive Testing – Working Group – 1) representing ISNT (India Society for Non Destructive Testing) for Training and Certification.
He has hands-on Experience of Quality Control and Quality Assurance of Pressure Vessels and Heat Exchangers, ASME U, U2 and N (Nuclear) Stamp Vessels, in-service inspection of the refinery equipments, and is NDT Level III for reputed fabrication companies. He has also worked for shutdown inspection in Saudi Arabia and off-shore platform inspection in Middle East.
Has conducted training courses in India, Singapore, Bangkok (Thailand), Indonesia, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, UAE etc. and has trained and certified more than 10000 QA/QC Personnel, with over a 1000 training programs in various disciplines to his credit.
Presently, apart from Consultancy, Mr. Joshi is devoting major time in Training in the areas like API 510 / 653 / 570 / 580 / 577 / SIFE exams, AWS (CWI) exams, ASNT Level III exams, Train the Trainers and ASME Code Specific
programs.
The following API Courses (more than 100 programs) are conducted for Qatar Petroleum, Aramco, Bapco, Reliance, IOCL and other refineries and also in Insight Quality Services in Pune and Chennai:
1) API 510 : Qatar Petroleum, Bapco, IOCL, Reliance, IQS
2) API 570 : Qatar Petroleum, Bapco, IOCL, Reliance, IQS
3) API 653 : Qatar Petroleum, Bapco, IOCL, Reliance, IQS, Aramco, Oman PDO, Abu Dhabi Polymers Co. Ltd., (Borouge) - UAE
4) API 580 : Qatar Petroleum, IQS
5) API 571 : IQS, IGF
6) API 577 : IQS, IGF
7) API SIFE : IGF, M/s Stork, Trinidad and Tobago, OMIFCO, IQS, India
8) Welding Inspection, QA/QC and Codes and Qatargas Operating Company Limited Standards
9) ASNT L-III Preparatory Indonesia, Thailand, UAE, IQS, India
Training Courses
Insight Quality Services is accredited by NCB-ISNT, and has worked for almost all multinationals and corporate
houses in India during its 24 years’ existence.
Dr. Banerjee is currently a Professor of Structural Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Prior to joining IIT Bombay, he had spent three years as an assistant professor at the Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology, Saint Louis University, USA. Dr. Banerjee’s research focuses in the areas of structural health monitoring using wave propagation and vibration based approaches, ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation of materials, and elastodynamic modelling of advanced composite structures. He has published over 100 articles in peer reviewed international journals and conference proceedings in these areas, including one book, two book chapters, and delivered invited talks in several important meetings. He has developed a dedicated Structural Health Monitoring and Retrofitting Laboratory, and introduced two new courses, namely, Nondestructive Testing of Materials and Elastic Waves in Solids, in the postgraduate curriculum. He has been PI for several sponsored research and industrial consultancy projects worth over USD 2 million. He has also directed 9 PhD student dissertations and 28 MTech student theses. One of his PhD students has been awarded Excellence in Thesis Work by IIT Bombay in August 2017. Dr. Banerjee has received Excellence in Teaching Award at IIT Bombay in 2013 & 2019, Best Paper award at the SPIE conference on Smart NDE for Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems, USA in 2003, the outstanding Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical engineering for 2003-2004 at UCLA, the outstanding MTech in Civil Engineering for 2001 at IIT Bombay, and ‘IIT-DAAD’ German scholarship in 2000-2001. He is currently an associate editor of ASME Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnostics and Prognostics of Engineering Systems.
Dr. Umesh Kumar is at present Head of Industrial Tomography and Instrumentation Section at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. He joined BARC in 1989 after successfully completing one-year OCES (Physics) programme of BARC Training School. He obtained his Ph.D. (Sc) from the University of Mumbai in 2004. He has almost thirty years of experience in research and development activities in radiation and radioisotope based imaging and computed tomography for industrial applications. His research interests include nuclear radiation-based industrial radiology, digital radiography and computed tomography for Non-destructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT&E). Dr. Umesh Kumar has been awarded the DAE Scientific and Technical Excellence Award 2007 for his contributions in the field of advanced nuclear imaging for industrial applications. He is also recipient of the NDT Achievement Award (Research and Development) 2009 by the Indian Society for Non-Destructive Testing, ISNT (Mumbai).
He has served as the National Project Coordinator (NPC, India) and Lead Country Coordinator (LCC) for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) coordinated Projects in the Asia-Pacific (RCA) Region on advanced digital imaging techniques and industrial computed tomography. He has also served as an international expert for the Technical Cooperation (TC) Evaluation of TC Equipment in Brazil for the Agency and as an instructor for the IAEA Regional Training Course (RTC) in industrial applications of advanced radiation based imaging held at KAERI, South Korea. He has been Course Director for two IAEA Regional Training Programmes held in India on DR&CT for international participants and also conducted a national workshop on digital imaging which was organized by the Indian Nuclear Society. Dr. Umesh Kumar was one of the international speakers invited by the IAEA to deliver a technical talk on Computed Tomography for Industry – Needs and Status, at the Scientific Forum held during the General Conference in September 2015 at IAEA HQ, Vienna, Austria.
He is a life member of Indian Society for Non-destructive testing (ISNT), National Association for Applications of Radioisotopes and Radiation in Industry (NAARRI) and Indian Nuclear Society (INS).
Dr. Bo Lan is a Research Fellow based at the Mechanical Engineering Department, Imperial College London, UK. He earned his PhD on Solid Mechanics in late 2014 from University of Oxford, and has been a PDRA at the Non-Destructive Evaluation group in Imperial until the award of the Fellowship in late 2018. He specialises on material characterisation, and has invented and experimentally implemented a general methodology that achieved high-fidelity recovery of volumetric texture (preferred crystallographic orientations) from ultrasonic wave speeds. This advancement opens door for improved characterisations of grain/microstructure sizes and morphologies etc. His research has led to multiple publications on leading journals (Acta Mater, Jnl of Mech Phys Solids), and has also attracted strong interests from industries: he has secured studentships from industrial companies IHI and Rolls-Royce, earned a 2-year technology transfer contract from Rolls-Royce, and conducted consultancy jobs for IHI and the titanium manufacturer Timet.
Dr. Paritosh Nanekar did his engineering in Metallurgy from VNIT, Nagpur (1991) and PhD from Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai. He is currently heading NDE & QA Section at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. He has over 27 years of experience in the field of ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation. He is primarily involved with the development and application of ultrasonic techniques for in-service inspection of critical nuclear power plant components. He has several awards to his credit including Science & Technology Award from Department of Atomic Energy and National NDT Award (R&D) from Indian Society for Non-Destructive Testing. He is closely associated with the activities of Indian Society for Non-Destructive Testing and is currently Hon. Secretary of National Certification Board, ISNT.
Dr. Anish Kumar is heading Ultrasonic Measurements Section of NDE Division in Metallurgy and Materials Group at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam. He obtained B.E. in Metallurgical Engineering from Bihar Institute of Technology, Sindri in 1996 and Ph.D from IIT, Kharagpur in 2005. In the past 22 years, he has been involved in development of innovative methodologies for ultrasonic inspection of nuclear components& structures and microstructural characterization in a wide range of alloy systems using acoustic &magnetic techniques. He worked as post-doctoral fellows at Fraunhofer Institute for NDT (IZFP), Germany (as Alexander von Humboldt fellow) and the University of Michigan, USA for one year each. He has over 150 publications to his credit including more than 100 publications in peer reviewed international journals. He is the recipient of Science & Technology Excellence Award (2015) from Dept. of Atomic Energy, National NDT Award in R&D (2015) from Indian Society for NDT (ISNT) and several young researcher/ scientist awards from various Indian and International societies, such as Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian Institute of Metals (IIM), The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS-USA), International Committee for NDT (ICNDT) and ISNT.
Abhijit Ganguli is an Associate Professor and the head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India, where he directs the Nondestructive Testing and Structural Health Monitoring Laboratory. His area of research involves development of advanced techniques for imaging of damage in civil engineering structures, using multimodal approaches. Abhijit's academic interests are in computational modeling of wave propagation, experimental mechanics and structural dynamics and he has contributed extensively to research on NDE of concrete media. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, where his major research contribution was on ultrasonic imaging as a tool for NDE of concrete structures. Abhijit has worked in the US with Schlumberger-Doll Research and Northeastern University, Boston and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst on applications of NDE for the oil and gas industry. He received his doctoral degree from Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and the Masters degree from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India.
Frederic Cegla holds an MEng and PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London, where he is also a Reader (Associate Professor) in the NDE group of the Mechanical Engineering Department (www.imperial.ac.uk/nde). His research focuses on the fundamental science behind and the application of ultrasonic waves for inspection, structural health and process monitoring. He also has an interest in signal processing and sensor design. He has experience of being a researcher at Imperial College London and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Frederic is a key contributor to the UK RCNDE that consists of many industrial members and 6 UK universities (Imperial, Bristol, Manchester, Nottingham, Warwick and Strathclyde).
He has held a prestigious EPSRC funded fellowship on non-destructive monitoring of engineering infrastructure and leads Imperial College’s input into the £36million ORCA hub for robotics and AI in harsh environments (https://orcahub.org/).
Dr Cegla is an active member of the Institute of Physics (IOP) and is currently the chair of the Physical Acoustics Group (PAG) that aims to advance and disseminate advanced knowledge in the field of physical acoustics.
One of the key successes of Dr Cegla’s research so far was the formation of the spin off company Permasense Ltd (www.permasense.com) which has become the worldwide number one provider of ultrasonic corrosion monitoring systems to the oil and gas industry. For this and his other contributions Dr Cegla has been awarded several prizes and received publicity.
Vinay Jammu is Technology Director, Software and Analytics in GE Research in Bangalore. He is responsible for labs located in Bangalore and Schenectady, NY, that are focused on driving domain-based analytics and software to differentiate GE’s Industrial Internet Solutions. Vinay obtained his doctoral degree from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1996 in Mechanical Engineering with specialization in applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for machine diagnosis. After a brief stint at Mechanical Technology Inc, NY, he joined GE Global Research, Schenectady, NY in 1997 as Diagnostics Engineer where he focused on developing predictive analytics for failure and life prediction of industrial assets. Vinay relocated to Bangalore in 2002 and held multiple roles as Lab Manager and Technology Leader in Aero-Thermal and Mechanical Systems organization in GE Global Research. Vinay is a certified master black belt, has 38 patents applications, and 60+ internal and external publications.
Dr. Philip F. Taday earned his Bachelor of Science degree in physics (1986), and his Ph.D. in chemistry (1991) from the University of Reading in England. While working at the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory he developed a femtosecond tabletop laser system as well as worked on novel tunable sources. In August 2000 Dr Taday began working at Toshiba Research Europe Ltd., on terahertz spectroscopy. Dr Taday joined TeraView Ltd. in April 2001 as part of the spin-out from Toshiba Research Europe. Dr Taday is currently the Principal Scientist and Head of the Applications Group at TeraView Limited. He works closely with customers in both pre and post sales.
In 1994, Ekkehard received a M.Sc. with honors in mechanical engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and in 1998 gained a Ph.D. with honors from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. From 1998, he continued as a senior researcher at the Centre for Product Development / Autonomous System Lab at the ETH. In parallel, he founded and built up an ETH spinoff company focusing product design & development. In 2008, he joined the new founded Alstom Inspection Robotics (now GE Inspection Robotics), a joint venture and R&D start up of ALSTOM and ETH Zürich, as CEO. In the last years Ekkehard has built up GE Inspection Robotics to a global prime mover in the field of mobile industrial service- and inspection robotics with having more than 200 systems out in the industrial field, spread all over the world. GE Inspection Robotics is regarded as a technology leader in the domain of autonomous service robotics for power generation and oil&gas industry.
Ekkehard was awarded with the euRobotics Technology Transfer Award, the IEEE-IFR Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation Award, the SPRINT Award and with several GE innovation awards.
Ekkehard acts as the European Chapter Coordinator of SPRINT.
Ekkehard acts as a robotics expert supporting the European Commission in the evaluation of innovation and research projects in the Horizon 2020 framework program. Further he is the founder of the topic group “Inspection and Maintenance Robotics” within euRobotics.
Dr. Debasish Mishra graduated from University of Roorkee with a post-graduate degree specializing in Engineering Physics. He then joined IIT Kanpur for M. Tech and Ph.D program in Nuclear Engineering. Debasish is a recipient of the prestigious Dr. K. S. Krishnan Fellowship of the Department of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India and Young Scientist Award from the Indian Science Congress Association.
Debasish worked at State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook as a Research Scientist and at the Idaho State University as a Research Assistant Professor. He joined at GE Global Research Center in June 2003. Currently he leads the Non-destructive Evaluation research group at GE Global Research Centre Bangalore.
Debasish has worked in laser/optical interferometry, digital radiography, computed tomography application for non-destructive evaluation of materials.
PD Dr. Ernst Niederleithinger serves as head of division “NDT methods for civil engineering” and as coordinator of the competence center “Data Analytics” at BAM, the German Institute for Materials Research and Testing. He is a geophysicist with a diploma from TU Berlin, a doctorate from U Potsdam and a habilitation degree from RWTH Aachen University, where he also lectures.
Before joining BAM he worked with a geophysical contractor. His main research interests are the adaption of geophysical methods to NDT as well as signal processing and imaging in ultrasonic testing and monitoring.
Shridhar has been with General Electric Research Center in upstate New York, USA for over 21 years involved in the development of technologies related to Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) and Composites. He currently leads a global team of researchers targeting design, analysis, manufacturing and automation of next generation of Wind Blades.Shridhar represents GE on both the IACMI (Institute of Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation) consortium as well as the ARM (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing) institute. One of his key responsibilities is supporting the integration ofLM Wind Power into GE, from a technology perspective.
In his previous role as the manager of the composites team, the charter was developing state-of-art technologies to maintain competitive advantage of GE products and expand the use of composites in newer components and systems. One example his team was very involved is the carbon composite fan blade on the GEnx engine that powers the Boeing 787 and the GE90 engine on the Boeing 777. Prior to his composite’s role, Shridhar managed the NDE team involved in developing novel solutions for both manufacturing and service of industrial products Shridhar received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University with a focus on understanding the sensor/defect interactions in materials using computational methods.
Dr Srinivas Kuchipudi, Scientist F is heading NDE group of Directorate of NDE, Advanced systems Laboratory. He has obtained his Ph.D in Physics from Osmania University, Hyderabad and later joined DRDO as scientist. He has been working in the area of NDE of composite structures for last 20 years. He and his team at ASL have gained considerable experience in non-destructive evaluation of composite structures using various advanced NDE techniques. He was receipt of several awards for his work. He is member editorial board of several journals. He has about 36 international papers and several conference proceedings to his credit.
Almost 40 years’ involvement in NDT:
With TWI Ltd since 2007, current role and responsibilities:
A deep passion for NDT and the important role it plays in making our world a safer place to live. I embrace technology and believe it enhances the ability of NDT methodologies to provide an increased assurance of integrity. The human will always have a role to play in NDT; however, we must accept and exploit the added capability that technology brings to our specialist field.
Brief Bio Data as requested:
Pierre Calmon received in 1990 his PhD in Physics at the University of Paris XI, France. He joined the Non Destructive Evaluation Department of CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) and worked on ultrasonic modelling and array imaging. Involved in the development of the CIVA simulation platform since its beginnings he is now scientific director of the NDE department of CEA. He is also vice president of the NDT commission at International Institute of Welding, and chairs the Scientific Hub of COFREND (French NDT Society). His current fields of interest cover NDE reliability, simulation and advanced processing of NDE data.
Dr. M R Bhat, currently a Chief Research Scientist at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, has been carrying out his academic and research activities primarily through experimental approach. His area of research has been in the field of Experimental Structures that encompasses , Non-Destructive Evaluation(NDE), Structural Health Monitoring ( SHM ) of Metallic & Advanced Composites, Smart Materials & Structures, and Fabrication & Testing of Composite materials. Dr. Bhat has been instrumental in setting up and running the well equipped NDE and Composites Laboratories at the department where research activities in the areas of Fabrication, Testing & Evaluation of this category of materials is being pursued extensively and rigorously.
Utilizing his expertise, skill and facilities Dr. Bhat has been successful in attracting research projects worth several crores of Rupees from various funding agencies and industries. Through these he has contributed very significantly to various National Aerospace and Defence Programs and also has further enhanced the research capability of the group by augmenting the existing facilities as well as by adding newer ones.
As a part of academic activities at the department, Dr. Bhat has been into teaching by offering graduate level courses on Non-Destructive Testing & Evaluation, Smart Materials & Structures and Experimental Techniques. He has been guiding students for their M.Sc ( Engg) & Ph. D. theses as well as several dissertation projects of ME students at the department. He has been invited to be examiner to evaluate Ph.D., M.Sc (Engg) & M E / M Tech theses from IITs and other academic institutions.
Dr. M R Bhat’s expertise in the field of structural testing and evaluation has been rigorously and extensively sought by other R & D organizations and Industries to solve their problems in the field. He has been invited as a faculty in several workshops and short term courses organized by various R & D organizations, academic institutions and industries to share his expertise and knowledge as also to train their engineers in the field. He has also been invited to be on several Technical / Evaluation committees by other R & D organizations and Academic Institutions as an expert member in the field.
Dr. C. K. Mukhopadhyay received B.E. from the University of Calcutta in 1982and PhD from IIT Kharagpur in 2003,both in Metallurgical Engineering. Dr. Mukhopadhyay joined Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu in 1985 after completing one year Orientation coursein Nuclear Science and Engineering from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay.Presently he isHead, Non Destructive Evaluation Division of Metallurgy and Materials Group, IGCAR. He is also Professor in Homi Bhabha National Institute, Kalpakkam.
His areas of research interests include characterization of defects, microstructure, deformation, fatigue, crack growth and fracture behavior in materials using non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques. He has been working in different NDE techniques including magnetic flux leakage, eddy current, ultrasonic, X-ray radiation, X-ray diffraction, acoustic emission and infrared thermography. He has carried out extensive studies on deformation, crack growth and fracture behaviour in materials used in nuclear as well as non-nuclear applications using acoustic emission and thermography. He has used acoustic emission technique for process monitoring studies including machining and forging. He has contributed significantly for the assessment of structural integrity of components of petrochemical industry, nuclear plants and aerospace industry. His expertise has also been used by other strategic and core departments like defence and space.He was a visiting scientist in Shanghai Research Institute of Materials, China, 2003. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA during 2006-2007and worked in the area high temperature tensile deformation, crack growth and fracture toughness of Ni-base alloys.
He has over 200 publications in peer reviewed journals and conferences including article in Encyclopedia of Material Science and one Book. He has guided more than 20 M. Tech and B. Tech theses and currently guiding 6 PhD thesis.He received many awards including 10 best paper awards in different Seminars and Conferences, DAE Group Achievement Award (2016) for “Development and Qualification of PFBR Steam Generator Inspection System (PSGIS) and Inspection of Eight Steam Generators (SGs) using PSGI”, 'Dr. S. Parthasarathy Award' by Ultrasonic Society of India 2009, ISNT-NDT Man of the Year Award (R & D) 2007, and Steel Authority of India Ltd. Gold Medal for best paper in the Transactions of The Indian Institute of Metals 1999.He has been invited to deliver lectures and chair sessions in many events in India and abroad.He is Life Member of different professional societies. He is Reviewer of technical articles for various National and International Journals and Member of Editorial Board of different journals.He has also served as Member, Doctoral Advisory Committee in different universities.
Dr. B. Purna Chandra Rao is an outstanding scientist and Project Director of Fast Reactor Fuel Cycle Facility (FRFCF), IGCAR, Kalpakkam. He is responsible for construction & commissioning of FRFCF that aims closing of the fast reactor fuel cycle for sustained operation and energy security. Dr. Rao focused research in NDE, quality assurance, material technology, fast reactors, in-service inspection, condition monitoring and failure analysis by giving special emphasis to modelling, sensor development, signal & images processing and artificial intelligence. He published more than 200 research papers and delivered several invited talks in India and abroad. Dr. B.P.C Rao received Homi Bhabha Science & Technology award of DAE, National NDT award & International recognition award of ISNT and Indian Nuclear Society Gold Medal, several DAE group achievement awards and best paper awards.
As a Senior Professor of Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI), Dr. B.P.C Rao guided 11 PhDs and several M.Tech projects. He is a member of the International Standing Committee of Electromagnetic NDE and Chairman of NDT Sectional Committee of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). Dr. Rao was the head of NDE Division, Metallurgy & Materials Group, IGCAR. He obtained PhD from Saarland University, Germany. He was a visiting scientist at Centre for NDE, Iowa State University, guest scientist at Fraunhofer Institute for NDT, Saarbrucken and an Expert NDT Consultant at IAEA, Vienna.
Dr. B. Venkatraman, M.Sc in Physics and PhD in NDE (Thermal NDE for materials characterization and weld monitoring) has over 33 years of experience in combining the physics of NDE with engineering and technology to provide R & D support and robust NDE based solutions to technologically challenging problems in the nuclear and other strategic / core industries. His interest is in the areas of digital X-ray, gamma and neutron radiography, infrared thermography, structural health monitoring through IOT. He is the past president of Asian Pacific Committee on NDT, Convener, Task Group – 4 on Education and Research, Asian Pacific Federation of NDT, Honorary Fellow of Indian Society for Non-Destructive Testing and President American Society for NDT (ASNT) – India Section. He is the series editor along with Dr. Baldev Raj for the NDT handbooks on Radiographic Testing, Ultrasonics, Eddy Current Testing and Acoustic Emission testing published by National Certification Board, ISNT. He is the recipient of Homi Bhabha Science and Technology Award 2007 for Individual Excellence, more than 5 Group Achievement Awards of DAE, INS Gold Medal 2005, ISNT-NDT Man of the Year Award (R & D) 2001, D & H Schereon Award, 1993, ISNT international recognition 2013, IIW Sharp Tools award 2011 and has won more than 10 best paper awards. Presently, he is an Outstanding Scientist and Director, Health Safety and Environment Group and Director, Resource Management and Public Awareness Group at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam.
Dr. (Ms.) Sarmishtha Palit Sagar, has been involved in the field of Non-destructive evaluation for more than 20 years and is currently a Senior Principal Scientist and serves as the Head of the NDE & magnetic materials (MM) group at CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur. She has worked as a visiting Scientist at Fraunhofer Institute for Non-destructive Testing, Saarbreucken, Germany from 2000-2002 and researched on guided wave ultrasound under Prof J L Rose at Pennsylvania State University, USA in 2009. She has been elected as a member of the editorial board of the Korean Journal of NDE, selected as a member of the Technical committee of many international conferences like QIRT, APCNDT and World Conference on NDT.
She has been awarded National NDT Award in “R&D” in the year 2005 and for “International Recognition” in 2017 by Indian Society for NDT. Institute of Engineers conferred on her the “Lady Engineer” award in the year 2012, Tata Innovista Regional Award in 2015 by Tata Groups. CSIR, India has awarded her Raman Research Fellowship award in 2008 to work at Pennsylvania State University.
She was invited as one of the key note speakers by Prof Jhang of Hanyang University, South Korea for the workshop on “Recent and future trends of non-linear ultrasonic”.
She is having 58 Publications in SCI and Non-SCI journals, 07 Patents and 05 copyrights in her credit. She has guided several Masters Students. Her experience in guiding research in NDE has seen her appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the prestigious European Project NOMAD under HORIZON 2020 in which 6 European Countries are involved.
C.V.Krishnamurthy is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at IIT Madras and is also affiliated to the Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE) at IIT Madras. He obtained his PhD from IIT Madras in 1989.
In the past, he had participated in contract research for the Indian Navy developing and delivering a product for on-board tactical use of RADARs. While at CNDE, he developed quantitative ultrasonic transducer models and had participated in the ultrasound benchmark problems set by the World Federation of NDE Centers. He has developed a computed point spread function approach for ultrasonic imaging applications. He has supervised the development of ray-tracing models and FDTD models for ultrasound propagation which has formed the basis for a commercial product that is currently available. He is currently the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator in several research projects funded by DST, DAE, ADA, ISRO and DRDO organizations. He was involved in the IGCAR funded project on the development of an Under-Sodium Imaging scheme for reactor vessel inspection. With BRNS funding, he has initiated the development of quantitative models to characterize elastic wave propagation and heat diffusion in polycrystalline metals and heterogenous media. As a Co-PI of the Indo-German program, AMPLAST, he is currently involved in the development of non-contact techniques for determination of temperature and emissivity of materials at high temperatures using infrared radiation. The on-going project with ASL (DRDO) involves the development of capacitance imaging and free space technique for material characterization. He has co-guided an MS thesis on new designs for ground penetrating radar as part of interdisciplinary program at IIT Madras.
His current research focus is in the development of experimental and computational techniques for electromagnetic nondestructive evaluation of material and defect characteristics. He actively collaborates with the Department of Engineering Design on the development of electromagnetic non-destructive evaluation techniques.
He has written a series of articles on advanced non-destructive imaging techniques under the feature HORIZON for the Journal for Nondestructive Evaluation (ISNT).
He has over 120 technical publications and has presented papers at several national and international conferences.
He is a Life Fellow of the Indian Society of Nondestructive Testing (ISNT).
He is a co-recipient of prestigious DRDO Academy Excellence Award for ‘Outstanding and Internationally recognized contribution in the field of NDT in collaboration with DRDO Laboratories leading to innovative and implementable products for DRDO Stakeholders’ as Head, Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, IIT Madras (Award for year 2015, received in April 2017).
Prof. Krishnan Balasubramaniam has been involved in the field of Non-destructive evaluation for more than Thirty years with applications in the fields of maintenance, quality assurance, manufacturing and design. His areas of research interests include Nondestructive evaluation, in-process monitoring, structural health monitoring, and applied data analysis. He is currently a Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Dean for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and also serves as the Head of the Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation which he founded in 2001.
He received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Madras (Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirapalli, India) in 1984. He then graduated from Drexel University with a M.S. degree in 1986 and a Ph.D. in the year 1989. Before joining IIT Madras in 2000, he was employed at Mississippi State University. He has over 400 technical publications (including 200 refereed journal papers), 16 patents filings and has directed 22 PHD student dissertations and 46 MS student theses.
In recognition for his outstanding contributions to research in the field of Nondestructive Evaluation, he was conferred with the ROY SHARPE PRIZE by the British Institute for NDT for the year 2012. He was also awarded the ISTEM Entrepreneurial Faculty Member Award for his entrepreneurial activities by Auburn University, USA in 2011 and the NATIONAL NDT AWARD 2010 by the Indian Society for NDT. He also was conferred the DRDO Academy Excellence Award for 2015. He has also been bestowed with the prestigious ABDUL KALAM National Technology Innovation Fellowship in 2018.
He has been instrumental in the incubation of several startups including Dhvani Research, Playns Technologies, Detect Technologies, Maximl Labs, Trotix Robotics, HyperVerge, and OP Tech and has jointly developed several new products through these companies.
He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Nondestructive Evaluation (ISNT) and as the South-east Asia Editor for the Journal of Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation (Taylor and Francis). He also serves as the Associate Editor of Ultrasonics (Elsevier) and serves in the editorial board of the Journal of Structural Longevity (Techscience). He also is a board member of the World Federation of NDE Centers and the QNDE Scientific Advisor Committee.
He is a Life Fellow of the Academia NDT International, Life Fellow of the Indian Society of Nondestructive Testing (ISNT) and a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers.
Prabhu Rajagopal is Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and an Associate of the Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation at IIT Madras (IITM). After graduating from IIT Madras in 2003 with a Dual Degree Masters in Mechanical Engineering specializing in Intelligent Manufacturing, he obtained his PhD in Ultrasonic NDE from Imperial College London, UK in 2007. As a post-doctoral researcher, he developed advanced computational tools for inspection of welds on a Rolls Royce funded project, also at Imperial (2008-2010). Joining IITM in Dec 2010, Dr. Rajagopal is currently Principal or CoInvestigator about 12 agency and industry sponsored projects, with a total value of over 10 Crore INR (about half of that as PI), and has contributed over 100 technical articles in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings and 9 Indian patent filings. He serves on the editorial board of ISNT Journal of NDE and is the Principal IITM Member on National Standardization Committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards and engages actively with industry. His areas of interest include strategies for inspection of structures under challenging conditions, and high resolution ultrasonic imaging using structured and topographic metamaterials. His research is strongly collaborative and international, with joint projects/publications with groups from universities such as Swinburne UT, Australia (with whom he has a joint PhD student), U.Nairobi Kenya (joint PhD), NTU Singapore, ZUT Poland, U. Warwick UK, U. Bordeaux France, MSU USA and ETS Montreal, Canada. He is a co-founding Director of the underwater and submersible robotics StartupPlanys Technologies Pvt. Ltd which licenses his IP filing on automated submerged pipeline inspections. His work has been recognized by the Indian Society for NDT through the National Young Scientist Award and the Institution of Engineers (India) through the National Design Award, both for the year 2016. More recently, he was awarded the prestigious ISSS Young Scientist Award by Institute of Smart Structures and Systems, IISc Bangalore, in recognition of his work on robotic NDE & SHM. He is co-recipient of the prestigious DRDO Academy Excellence Award for ‘Outstanding and Internationally recognized contribution in the field of NDT in collaboration with DRDO Laboratories leading to innovative and implementable products for DRDO Stakeholders’ as an Associate of the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, IIT Madras (Award for year 2015, received in April 2017)
