Adjunct Faculty

Kamrul Hossain, an international law expert by training, is a Research Professor and the Director of the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law (NIEM) at the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland. He is the Chair of the University of the Arctic’s Legal Research and Education and leads the Thematic Network on Arctic Law. Hossain holds the Adjunct Professorship of International Law at the University of Lapland. His research broadly covers international environmental law, ocean governance, and human rights laws, particularly as they apply to the Arctic. He specifically focuses on climate change, climate justice, and human rights applicable to Arctic Indigenous peoples. Over the years, he has extensively published in almost all areas of Arctic governance, including climate change, environmental governance, biodiversity, geopolitics, the law of the sea, human rights and human security, etc., highlighting legal, institutional, and policy perspectives. In his research, he increasingly bridges a link between the Arctic and other Polar regions, particularly the Third Pole Himalayan region, as part of the global environmental systems concerning the impacts of climate change. He collaborates nationally and globally with scholars and institutions on issues related to the circumpolar Arctic and other polar regions. He has been the Principal Investigator of several international and national competitive research grants from renowned funding instruments.

Dr. Mrittunjoy Guha Majumdar is an Assistant Professor at Amrita Vishwavidyapeetham, Delhi NCR . Having completed his doctorate from Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, he has been an institutional postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Indian Institute of Science – Bangalore (funded by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India) and a postdoctoral associate of Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1973) Prof. Brian Josephson at the University of Cambridge. He has been a Trinity Barlow Scholar (2015-2018), Nehru Scholar (2014-2018), INSPIRE Scholar (2011-2014) and TIFR NIUS Fellow (2012-2014). He was a lead speaker in the domain of quantum error correction at the National Quantum Mission (NQM) strategic consultation meeting in July 2023. His area of research expertise is in entanglement, quantum information and the foundations of quantum physics. He has had training in Artificial Intelligence from the MIT Schwarzmann School of Computing, with one of his recent research focus-areas being Quantum Machine Learning (QML). Dr. Guha Majumdar has previously worked with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Government of India), UNESCO and G20 on education and science policy. He has also been a science communicator, with his documentary on quantum mechanics aired on Doordarshan, under the Science India initiative.

Ganesh V. Shivaswamy is a lawyer from Bengaluru. His grand-father was Justice A. R. Somnath Iyer who was the Chief Justice of the High Court of Karnataka and the Acting Governor of Karnataka briefly in 1969. In addition to his profession, Ganesh has taken up the task of structuring the artistic legacy of Raja Ravi Varma.

In 2019 he established the Ganesh Shivaswamy Foundation, which immediately thereafter partnered with Google Arts and Culture. The platform was launched by Her Highness Shubhangini Raje, Rajamata Ji of Baroda in September of that year. In 2020, the Foundation showcased the largest collaborative exhibition of the artist’s work to celebrate 150 years since the commencement of Ravi Varma’s career.

Ganesh continues his research on Raja Ravi Varma and is the author of a six-volume book series, Raja Ravi Varma: An Everlasting Imprint which explores the social, religious and aesthetic impact of Ravi Varma’s images on the people of the Indian sub-continent and beyond. A team from the Critical Collective, New Delhi consisting of Gayatri Sinha, Mrinalini Vasudevan and Namrata Ghosh edited the books.

In March 2021, Ganesh was appointed the honorary curator of the new wing of the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram which is specifically dedicated to the works of Ravi Varma and associated artists. The new wing of the Sree Chitra Art Gallery was inaugurated on September 25, 2023 by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan. He is also the honorary curator of the museum at the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village, Manipal.

Ganesh has extensively spoken on the artist’s legacy for the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru; the Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyer Art Foundation; Bangalore International Center; IGNCA, and Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Vadodara among others.

He seeks to explore the dynamics of inter-disciplinary learning as he has worked extensively in the fields of litigation and art academia.

Balu is a technology leader, entrepreneur, and enabler in DeepTech startups, with extensive experience in the USA and Indian ecosystems. He collaborates with accelerators like UC Berkeley Skydeck, Carnegie Mellon University’s Schwartz Center, NASSCOM, and IIT-B eCell, providing technical and strategic guidance to startups in the USA, EU, Japan, and India. As an ecosystem adviser for AI entrepreneurs at UC Berkeley and Director of International Collaborations at RV University, Bangalore, Balu nurtures student entrepreneurs.

With over a decade of expertise, Balu specializes in DeepTech, product scalability, development, go-to-market strategies, and customer acquisition. He supports UC Berkeley startups with engineering, staffing, and strategic initiatives and serves as a jury member at prestigious startup events. As co-founder of HUM Consulting Services (HUMCS), Balu offers fractional CxO services in software architecture, design, and scalability.

He also fosters industry-academia partnerships, driving collaborations between startups and universities. Balu co-founded Vigyanlabs, a DeepTech company focused on power optimization and previously worked in Wireless Semiconductors with Qualcomm and Intel. He holds degrees in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Mysore. Balu is also a Carnatic music artist, yoga teacher, and STEAM education advocate.

Dr. Sivakumar Sivasubramaniam is currently Extraordinary Professor and past Head of Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape, Republic of South Africa (RSA). He is a rated Researcher of the National Research Foundation (NRF) in RSA and serves as a Panellist on the NRF’s Education Specialist Rating Committee. He is also an Executive Committee Member of English Scholars Beyond Borders (ESBB), a voluntary organization that is committed to promoting locally relevant practices and pedagogies aimed at democratizing and dehegemonizing the teaching of English and researching into it across cultures and continents. He has been a foreign language/ second language educator for over forty years now and has taught English in India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Bahrain, Armenia, and U.A.E prior to relocating to the Western Cape. He has presented papers, conducted workshops and delivered plenaries at prestigious conference forums abroad. His research interests include response-centred reading/ writing pedagogies, content-based pedagogies focused on the learners’ agency, voice and intersubjectivities, constructivism in English as an International Language (EIL), second language advocacy for social justice, narrative knowing in education and text-based approaches to academic and social literacy practices

Dr. Venkatesan Chakrapani, MD, PhD, is Chairperson of the Centre for Sexuality and Health Research and Policy (C-SHaRP) in Chennai, and a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance CRC Grantee at The Humsafar Trust in Mumbai. He completed his MD from Madras Medical College and his PhD from the School of Public Health at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER). Dr. Chakrapani brings over two decades of experience in policy-oriented health research – focusing on describing, explaining, and addressing health inequities among sexual and gender minority communities. He has published 80+ peer-reviewed research articles (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9998-9135), six book chapters and 70+ policy/technical reports. As the Chair of the Technical Resource Group (TRG) on HIV prevention/care among trans people under the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) and as a member of NACO’s TRG on HIV prevention/care among men who have sex with men, he contributes to improving policies and programmes. He has also served as a member of the “Expert Committee on the issues relating to Transgender Persons” for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. He has received prestigious fellowships such as the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Senior Fellowship and the NIH Fogarty Fellowship from Yale University.

I am a cognitive scientist with research experience since 2014, starting with a master's in Cognitive Science from the Centre of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Allahabad. I have a bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University, Chennai. I also engage in AI ethics research (accidentally!)

I have held research positions at IIT Kanpur, NIMHANS (Bengaluru), and New York University Abu Dhabi. My interdisciplinary research spans computational modeling, machine (deep) learning, visual perception, and cognitive neuroscience, with projects in the areas of visual scene perception, emotional scene processing, visual word recognition, corpus-based psycholinguistics, computational psychiatry, dementia research, and behavioural game theory. 

I am passionate about understanding brain algorithms and exploring the missing links between the top-down and bottom-up approaches to computation. I'm also intrigued by how advanced technologies can mimic and augment human cognitive processes. This raises profound questions about what it means to be human, the nature of self, agency, and consciousness.

I have taught courses on cognitive processes (basic & advanced) at IIT Kanpur and served as a TA for the Neuromatch Academy’s Deep Learning and NeuroAI summer courses for two years, and also taught the Cognitive Science & Research course as a visiting faculty (Strate School of Design).

D.B.Venkatesh Varma served in the Indian Foreign Service from 1988 to 2021. During his diplomatic career, he worked in the Office of the External Affairs Minister and in the Prime Minister’s Office. He served as India’s Ambassador to Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, to the Kingdom of Spain and to the Russian Federation, until October 2021.He has vast experience in India’s Security and Defence policies and served as Joint Secretary in charge of Disarmament and International Security in the Ministry of External Affairs. He was the first Recipient of the S.K.Singh Award for Excellence in the Indian Foreign Service in 2011 for his contribution to the negotiations of the Civil Nuclear Initiative. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the VIF New Delhi.  He is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters

Prof. M.Jayananda has unique blende of expertise across several disciplines of geosciences including tectonic fabric analysis, petrology, solid earth geochemistry and radiogenic isotopes. He has focused multidisciplinary research on early Earth dynamics, origin of habitable continents, shift from anoxic to oxygenation of Archean ocean, Cenozoic surface dynamics, landscape evolution and topographic build-up in Western Ghats. Recently he has initiated a new study on Trans-Himalaya addressing the magmatism, tectonics, environmental crisis across Permo-Triassic boundary. For the past four decades he has worked in Universities in India (Bangalore University, Delhi University and Hyderabad Central University) and France (Universite de Rennes I) contributing to research, teaching, mentoring PhD, post-docs, outreach, and public engagement. He has also contributed to the global science community as Editor-in-Chief of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) flagship journal ’Episodes’ 2009-2013, Editor-in-Chief of the Himalayan Geology (2017-), Associate Editor of Journal of Earth System Science (2013-2016), Regional Editor of Gondwana Research (2004-2007), Editorial board member Journal of Geological Society of India (2009-2018), Precambrian Research (2020-) and Jour Asian Earth Sciences (2008-).  He has participated in IUGS programs (IGCP projects), participating in National Committees, outreach activities by delivering lectures at different Universities and as a mentor at Government of India flagship science program of Inspire Camps for high school students. In view of these contributions to research, academics, mentoring of students, capacity building and promotion of science through editing/reviewing, he has been conferred several National Awards, elected to the Fellowship of all the three National Science Academies of India and J.C. Bose National Fellowship.

Lt Gen Suresh Sharma is a former senior military leader who served as Engineer-in-Chief of the Indian Army. In a career spanning 38 years, he earned the distinction of steering two premier defence organisations. His successive tenures as the Director General of Border Roads Organisation (DGBR) and Engineer-in-Chief (E-in-C) witnessed a large-scale transformation of strategic and military infrastructure across the country and enhanced the technical and logistical capabilities of Indian Army.

As E-in-C, he applied an outcome-oriented approach to revamp the Married Accommodation Project, expedite ongoing works, clear tendering backlogs and fast-track equipment acquisition and modernisation. As DGBR he focussed on aligning BRO’s immediate priorities with India’s evolving geo-strategic interests, thereby reclaiming its pre-eminence as a strategic infrastructure development agency. He also implemented policy reforms and organisational restructuring to resolve complex legacy issues. From 2016-18, he personally oversaw a cumulative revenue and capital expenditure budget of INR 26,000 Crores.

Other career highlights include command of an engineer regiment during Operation Parakram and the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake; key operations, logistics, training and administration portfolios and tenures as Chief Engineer (Indian Navy & Coast Guard) Mumbai Zone, Commandant Bengal Engineer Group & Centre Roorkee, Chief Engineer South Western Command and Director General Combat Engineers. He has been a leader in domestic and international humanitarian and disaster relief (HADR) missions — including an appointment as the United Nations Advisor for humanitarian mine action in Bosnia & Herzegovina. He has trained and mentored young military leaders and been deeply committed to improving the liveability index of defence bases.

Lt Gen Sharma has attended prestigious tri-services courses at the Defence Service Staff College, College of Defence Management and National Defence College. In addition to a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from Harcourt Butler Technical University, he holds M.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees in Defence and Strategic Studies from Madras University and a Masters in Management Studies from Osmania University. He is associated, in various capacities, with the Institution of Military Engineers, Indian Institute of Bridge Engineers, Indian Building Congress, Indian Road Congress, Tunnelling Association of India, Construction Industry Development Council, Construction Industry Arbitration Council and Indian Society for Trenchless Technology.

His professional expertise lies in the areas of military and technical leadership, policy formulation, financial planning, government affairs, capital asset acquisition, arbitration, high-level contract and budget management and delivery of mega infrastructure projects. In recognition of his exceptional services, the President of India has honoured Lt Gen Sharma twice, with the Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) in 2018 and Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM) in 2016. He has further contributed to the Nation Building efforts while working in the Corporate Sector. As Chief Principal WSP Louis Berger ( American MNC), oversaw the Design and Consultancy Projects in India for two years. Currently, he is engaged as an Advisor with Geoconsult India ( Austrian MNC), JCB India and Tikitar Shell.