Director's Profile

Education

• PhD (Directly after B.Tech), IIT Madras (1989)
• BTech (EE), IIT Madras (1983)

Research Interests

• Semiconductor devices
• Education

Why I teach

Watch the video here.

Short Profile

He received the B. Tech and accelerated PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from IITM in 1983 and 1989, respectively. He has held visiting research / teaching assignments at several US universities, namely, University of California, Santa Barbara; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York; and University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA.

He has authored numerous articles in journals, conferences and books, and has been awarded three patents in the areas of semiconductor device modeling and process development. His recent work is on modeling and simulation of power devices, nano-devices, GaN HEMTs and solar cells. He has received the 2006 Vikram Sarabhai Award for research, 2007 IBM Faculty Award for research and teaching, 2021 VLSI Society of India Best Faculty Award for "contributions in the area of teaching, popularizing and creating some of the best minds in Microelectronics in the last 30 years," and the president’s nomination to the IIT Council for “contributions in education, science or technology”. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. on Education (first ever from India). He has acted as a consultant to industries for developing manufacturing processes for semiconductor devices.

His contributions in the field of education include three widely viewed online video courses on Solid State Devices, Semiconductor Device Modeling and Introduction to Research (see links below). The latter is a lecture-cum-activity oriented course to foster research skills among research scholars. He initiated this as a compulsory course for all research scholars in IITM and has conducted over 30 workshops country-wide. He has also conducted solely or jointly over 80 Faculty Development sessions on various aspects of “How teachers can make a difference” in institutions including IITs, IISERs, NITs, and IIIT. He was the Head of the Teaching Learning Center at IITM during 2019-2022.

He is a member of the Governing Council of CeNS (Center for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences). He was a member of the National Working Group on Nanotechnology set up by the Department of Information Technology, Govt. of India. He is a member of the executive committee of AICTE and the Chairman of AICTE’s All India Board of PG Education and Research. He was a member of the All India Board of Undergraduate Studies of the AICTE.

He was the Vice-Chairman of JEE 2006 and Chairman of JEE 2007 operations in the South Zone.

He is a strong espouser of holistic education, and a multilingual – can read, write and speak – Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, and can converse in – Telugu, Tamil and to an extent, Sanskrit.

Video Lectures available

Solid State Devices, hosted on NPTEL and YouTube.

Semiconductor Device Modeling, hosted on NPTEL and YouTube.

Engineering Problem Solving on YouTube

Introduction to Research, hosted on YouTube.

Follow no one, but learn from everyone, and Acknowledge it too, hosted on YouTube