People Page

Dr. Tim Stuchtey holds a Master's degree in economics from the University of Münster, Germany and a doctorate in the same field from the Technical University of Berlin. He commenced his career as a personal assistant to the President of the TU Berlin before assuming a role at the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations specialising in economic policy. In 2001, he relocated to the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he subsequently assumed the role of Head of the Presidential Department. At Humboldt, Tim established the Humboldt Institution on Transatlantic Issues (HITI) and in 2007 relocated to the American-German Institute (formerly the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS)) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, where he assumed the roles of Senior Fellow and Program Director of Business and Economics. In 2010, Tim assumed the role of Executive Director of the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS) in Potsdam, Germany. He oversees national and international research consortia on civil security and conducts his own research in the field of (cyber-)security economics and security policy. He is a regular columnist and contributor in the German media and a sought-after speaker on security and economic policy.

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