Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Dr. Jhunjhunwala is considered the pioneer in nurturing Industry -Academia interaction in India towards R&D, Innovation and Product Development. TIE conferred him the title of ‘Dronacharya’ for his contributions to the cause of entrepreneurship, as he incubated and nurtured over 100 companies at IIT Madras. He conceived and built the first Research Park (IIT Madras Research Park) in India which houses over 65 R&D companies and 100 incubated companies. He founded and had been leading the Telecommunications and Computer Networks group (TeNeT), which has worked closely with industry in the development of a number of products for telecom, banking and energy industries. Dr. Jhunjhunwala has been Chairman and member of various government committees and has been on Boards of several education institutions in the country. At the same time, he has been on the Boards of a number of public and private companies and has driven comprehensive changes, especially in the area of technology. He was formerly a Director on the Board of State Bank of India, Bharat Electronics, HTL, NRDC, IDRBT, VSNL, BSNL and Polaris. Currently he is a Board member of Tata Communications, Mahindra Electricals, Sasken, Tejas Networks, TTML, Intellect and Exicom. He is currently also on the Board of BIRAC and Chairman of Technology Advisory Group of SEBI. Dr. Jhunjhunwala was conferred Padma Shri in 2002, Shanti-swarup Bhatnagar Award, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award, H. K. Firodia Award, Silicon India Leadership Award, Millenium Medal at Indian Science Congress, UGC Hari Om Ashram Award, IETE’s Ram Lala Wadhwa Gold Medal, JC Bose fellowship, Bernard Low Humanitarian Award and many others. He is fellow of IEEE, INSA, NAS, IAS, INAE and WWRF. He has also been conferred Honorary Doctorate by University of Maine and Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala is an Institute Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras at Chennai, India and has currently taken over as Advisor to Minister of Power and MNRE, Government of India. After his B.Tech from IITK, he got his MS and PhD from the University of Maine and was a faculty at Washington State University from 1979 to 1981. Since 1981, he has been teaching at IIT, Madras.