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Prof Laxmidhar Behera is new director of IIT Mandi
Prof Laxmidhar Behera has been appointed as the new director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi. He is currently the Poonam and Prabhu Goel chair professor of electrical engineering at the IIT, Kanpur
Prof Laxmidhar Behera has been appointed as the new director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi.
Prof Behera is currently the Poonam and Prabhu Goel chair professor of electrical engineering at the IIT, Kanpur. In addition, he is an affiliate faculty member of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
He will succeed the current acting director of IIT Mandi Prof AK Chaturvedi
Prof Behera earned his BSc (Engg) and MSc (Engg) from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela, in 1988 and 1990, respectively. In 1997, he received a PhD from the IIT, Delhi.
Over the past 26 years of his research and teaching career, Prof Behera has contributed significantly to areas such as intelligent systems and control, vision-based robotics, warehouse automation, brain-computer-interface and drone-based pipeline inspection systems.
In addition to establishing industrial collaboration with TCS, Renault Nissan, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore, he had made significant technological development in areas such as robotics-based ware-house automation, vision and drone guided driver assistance.
He worked as a reader at the University of Ulster, the United Kingdom, from 2007 to 2009 and visiting professor at ETH, Zurich, and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (FHG), Germany.
He supervised 22 PhD candidates to completion. Besides three graduate-level textbooks, he has authored 110 peer-reviewed journal articles, 208 conference papers, and 17 book chapters.
“It is a great honour and simultaneously a huge responsibility. I will strive hard for the holistic development of the institute where the culture of excellence will be a norm,” said Prof Behera.
Welcoming the new director, the acting director Prof Chaturvedi said Prof Behera was a renowned academic and his inspirational leadership of IIT, Mandi, will ensure growth, along with continuity, on the solid foundation laid by the founding director Prof Timothy Gonsalves who served the institute from 2010 to 2020.
