Plenary Speakers


Prof. Gautam Biswas
IIT Kanpur, India
Title: Dynamics of drop coalescence and entrapment of large bubble.
Dr. Gautam Biswas is presently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Earlier, he has been the Director of Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, and Director of the CSIR-Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute at Durgapur. He was the G.D. and V.M. Mehta Endowed Chair Professor, and Dean of academic affairs at IIT Kanpur. Professor Biswas is the author of more than 150 publications in the International Journals. He has completed guidance of 23 PhD theses. He was a Humboldt Fellow in Germany in 1987-88 and JSPS invited fellow in Japan 1994. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He has served a full term as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Heat Transfer (Trans ASME). He was a Guest Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2002. Currently he is Associate Editor of a well-known CFD-Journal, - Computer and Fluids.
Prof Gautam Biswas is a Fellow of the all three major Science Academies of India, such as, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi, the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS, Bangalore) and the National Academy of Sciences India (NASI, Allahabad). He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and Institution of Engineers India (IEI). He has been awarded the esteemed J.C. Bose National Fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi in 2011. Prof. Biswas was bestowed with Distinguished Alumnus Award by BESU (now IIEST, Shibpur) in the year 2013. He has been awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2016. Prof. Biswas was conferred Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) by National Institute of Technology Agartala, India, in 2017. He has been conferred Honorary Doctorate by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2018.


Prof. h.c. Franz Durst
FMP TECHNOLOGY GMBH, Erlangen, Germany
Title: Solutions of Some Unsolved Problems of Fluid Mechanics.
Prof. Durst studied Aeronautical Engineering at the Technical University of Stuttgart in Germany and completed his M.Sc.- and Ph.D.-degrees at Imperial College of the University of London. Afterwords he worked at a Special Research Centre (SFB 80) at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany, before he became Professor at the University of Erlangen, also in Germany. After retirement in 2007, he joined the company FMP Technology as CEO where he is still active. He continued there his research work in fields like Laser Doppler Anemometry, laminar and turbulent flows. Extended Navier-Stokes-Equations, Micro-channel flows, coating and drying equipment, etc. For his work he obtained various national and international prizes and he is a member of 5 Scientific Academies.

Keynote Speakers


Prof. An-Bang WANG
National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Title:One-step-further research from the basic fluid mechanicsto its modern biomedical applications.
Dr. An-Bang Wang is presently a distinguished professor at National Taiwan University. He has served as the director of Optomechatronics Education Resource center, the chairman of the display technology Education Program and counselor of advisory office, Ministry of Education, Taiwan, ROC. He has been honored with the 2013 Distinguished Engineering Professor Award granted by Chinese Institute of Engineers, Taiwan, ROC. From 2014 to 2016, he was elected as vice president of International Society of Coating Science and Technology. His current research interests include advanced coating & 3D-printing technology, microfluidic platform for biomedical and industrial applications, optomechatronic systems, and biomimetics.

Prof. Ashis Kumar Sen
IIT Madras, India
Title: Nature-inspired capillary flows.
Dr Ashis Kumar Sen is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras. His group works on the fundamentals and applications of micro nano bio fluidics, covering micro/nano scale interfacial phenomena, microfluidic technique and design and lab on chip technology. He is the recipient of the Swarna Jayanti Fellowship 2017-18, NASI-Scopus Young Scientist Award (finalist) 2019, IIT Madras Young Faculty Recognition Award 2017 and Institute Research and Development Award - Early Career Level 2017, INAE Young Engineer Award 2013, IEI Young Engineer Award 2013, DAAD Fellowship 2012 and the USC Outstanding Graduate Student Award 2007. Dr. Sen is a Life member of the Indian Society of Heat and Mass Transfer, Indian Society of Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power, and Indian Society of Smart Materials and Structures.

Dr. L. Venkatakrishnan
NAL Bangalore, India
Title: On the Phase Averaged Momentum of Fluidic Oscillators.
Dr L. Venkatakrishnan is Chief Scientist and Head, Experimental Aerodynamics Division at National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore. His main interests are in flow diagnostics, fluid mechanics and aeroacoustics. He has developed new measurement methodologies as well as techniques for launch vehicle noise suppression and a field ready Electronic Target System. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, UK, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has been awarded the Prof Satish Dhawan Award for Young Engineers in 2011 in addition to the Best Innovation award from CSIR-NAL in 2013 and on the Editorial Advisory board of the Springer journal Experiments in Fluids.


Prof. Srinath Ekkad
North Carolina State University, USA
Title: Heat Transfer Studies for Gas Turbine Hot Gas Path Components.
Dr. S. V. Ekkad is the Department Head and RJ Reynolds Professor in the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department at North Carolina State University since September 2017. He previously served as the Associate Vice President for Research Programs at Virginia Tech. He also held the title of Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor for Aerospace Propulsion Systems at Virginia Tech. He was also the Founder and Director of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Center for Advanced System Diagnostics at Virginia Tech, one of 30 centers around the world, prior to joining NC State. He was in the Mechanical Engineering department at Virginia Tech from August 2007 to September 2017 after 9 years at LSU and 2 years at Rolls-Royce Allison Engine Company in Indianapolis. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and M.S. from Arizona State University. He has over 25 years of experience in heat transfer related research. He has published over 250 journal & conference articles, three patents and co-authored a book and three book chapters. He currently has funding from Solar Turbines, and Trilotus Aerospace Systems/Chromalloy. He has been working on gas turbine cooling and heat transfer issues since 1989 including a stint as a design engineer at Rolls-Royce, Indianapolis before his academic career. Dr. Ekkad has also served as a summer faculty fellow at AFRL, Dayton in 2003. He is well known for his contributions to heat transfer experimental methods. In 2004, he received the inaugural ASME Bergles/Rohsenow Young Investigator in Heat Transfer Award for significant contributions to the field of heat transfer by a researcher under the age of 36. He is also the Editor-in-Chief for the ASME Journal for Thermal Science and Engineering Applications.


Prof. Arup Kumar Das
IIT Roorkee, India
Title: Use of microfluidics for assessment of physical exhaustion level.
Dr. Arup Kumar Das is currently working as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, IIT Roorkee. He has received his MS and Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in the years 2006 and 2010. He is recipient of numerous awards, which include K. N. Seetharamu Award and Medal for Young Researcher by ISHMT in 2019, young scientist award by INSA in 2015. His current research interests are focused on two-phase flows, microfluidics, biofluidic, boiling heat transfer, and numerical methods. He has authored more than 90 peer-reviewed journals and has six registered patents.


Prof. Yosuke Hasegawa
The University of Tokyo, Japan
Title: Optimal control of wall turbulence for dissimilar heat and momentum transport.
Yosuke Hasegawa received Ph.D. degree from Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Tokyo in 2004. After working as a postdoc and a research associate in the same department, he moved to Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and spent two years as a visiting professor from April 2010 until April 2012. After returning to Japan, he was appointed as an assistant professor in Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo. In 2013, he became a lecturer and started leading his own lab as a principal investigator. Since 2015 up to present, he has been appointed as an associate professor. His expertise is prediction and control of turbulence and associated transport phenomena. He has published more than 30 peer-review papers, and 100 conference papers.


Prof. A M Pradeep
IIT Bombay, India
Title: Understanding Instabilities in Axial Flow Compressors.
Prof. A M Pradeep is currently Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay. He completed his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Calicut University in 1998. Subsequently, he pursued Masters and PhD from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IIT Kanpur. After completion of his PhD from IIT Kanpur in 2004, he joined IIT Bombay as an Assistant Professor. His research interests are in the areas of turbomachinery aerodynamics, design and performance evaluation-enhancement of turbomachinery using passive/active flow control methods. He has supervised 8 Ph.D. and 58 Masters students at IIT Bombay. He has over 90 publications in international journals and conference. He is also a co-inventor in three granted patents.


Prof. Partha P Mukherjee
Purdue University, USA
Title: Mesoscale Reactive Transport Physics in Energy Storage.
Partha P. Mukherjee is currently an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, a staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and a Director’s Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, and before that he worked at Fluent India, currently Ansys, Inc. He received the Scialog Fellow recognition for energy storage, TMS Young Leaders award, and Purdue Engineering 2020 Faculty Early Career Research Excellence award, among others. His research is focused on mesoscale physics and stochastics of transport, flow, and chemistry interactions in energy storage and conversion.


Prof. Ganesh Natarajan
IIT Palakkad, India
Title: Towards an Unified Framework for Gradient Schemes in Unstructured Finite Volume Solvers.
Dr. Ganesh Natarajan is currently an Associate Professor at Dept. of Mech. Engg., IIT Palakkad. He completed his B.Tech in Mechanical Engg. from NIT Calicut and ME and PhD in Aerospace Engg. from IISc Bangalore. After working as a postdoctoral fellow for a year at University of Minnesota, he joined the Dept. of Mechanical Engg. at IIT Guwahati and had an eight-year long association before joining IIT Palakkad in December 2018. His primary research interests are in the development of numerical algorithms for compressible and incompressible flows with a focus on immersed boundary methods and unstructured finite volume techniques.


Prof. S. Balachandar
University of Florida, USA
Title: Host-to-Host Airborne Contagion As a Multiphase Flow Problem For Science-Based Social Distance Guidelines.
S. "Bala" Balachandar got his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1983 and his MS and PhD in Applied Mathematics and Engineering at Brown University in 1985 and 1989. From 1990 to 2005 he was at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. From 2005 to 2011 he served as the Chairman of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. Currently he is a distinguished professor at the University of Florida. He is the William F. Powers Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and the Director of College of Engineering Institute for Computational Engineering. Bala received the Francois Naftali Frenkiel Award from American Physical Society (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) in 1996 and the Arnold O. Beckman Award and the University Scholar Award from University of Illinois. He is Fellow of ASME and the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics. He was the recipient of ASME Freeman Fellow in 2017 and the Gad Hetsroni Senior Researcher Award from International Conference on Multiphase Flow in 2019. Last year he was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT-Madras and was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Advisor/Mentor Award at the University of Florida. He is currently the co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Multiphase Flow and an associate editor of the Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics.


Prof. Saptarshi Basu
IISc Bangalore, India
Title: Droplet and Aerosols in Context of CoViD-19.
Prof. Saptarshi Basu is currently DRDO Chair Professor in the department of mechanical engineering at IISc. Prof. Basu primarily works on multiphase systems especially droplets at multiple length and timescales. He is a fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, ASME, AIAA and Institute of Physics. Prof. Basu is the recipient of DST Swarnajayanti Fellowship in engineering.


Prof. Chen Lin
Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, China
Title: Multi-Scale Thermohydrodynamics and Measurement Techniques in Supercritical Fluid Systems.
Dr. CHEN Lin is a full Professor in Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He obtained PhD (2015) from Peking University(China) and then worked as an Assistant Professor in Tohoku University(Japan). His research topics include supercritical fluids, energy conversion, and advanced measurement techniques. In recent years he presided and joined over 20 national projects and has authored more than 120 well-cited international journal/conference papers. He is the winner of "Young Scientist Award” of Asian Union of Thermal Science and Engineering (2018). He is Associate Editor of ASME JNERS and Board of The Journal of Supercritical Fluids (Elsevier).