Thondiyath Asokan

Dr T Asokan is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Design, and currently the Head of the Department at IIT Madras. He completed his B.Tech. and M.Tech. in mechanical engineering from Calicut University. Dr Asokan received his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in the year 2000. His area of specialization was electro hydraulic controls for robotic applications. He then spent six years as a researcher at the Robotics Research Center, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore working in the area of mechatronic systems and robotics. He was instrumental in developing the Remotely Operated Underwater vehicle and a 7-axis underwater manipulator at NTU, Singapore. Prior to this, he spent 3 years in DRDO as a Scientist. He joined IIT Madras as Assistant Professor in the year 2006 and was promoted as Associate Professor in 2009 and Professor in 2014. He was awarded the Stanford-India biodesign fellowship by the Stanford University, USA in 2009 and has completed a post doctoral fellowship in medical device development at the Stanford University. Dr. Asokan is a visiting Fellow of the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is currently the national secretary of The Robotics Society. His areas of teaching and research are Robotics, Product design, and Engineering System design. Dr Asokan has published more than 120 papers in International Journals and conferences and has filed 20 patents in India, USA and Singapore. He has supervised 11 Ph.D and 9 MS students and currently supervising 6 Ph.D, 3 MS and 6 dual degree students. He is actively involved in many sponsored research projects with an approximate budget of Rs. 500 lakhs, sponsored by DRDO, ISRO, DST, NRB and other sponsoring agencies.

Awards/Scholarships:

• JC Bose Patent Award 2013, IIT Madras
• NCIIA Travel grant to attend the 18th conference of the NCIIA at San Jose, California (sponsored by Lemelson Foundation, USA).
• Indo-Australian Senior Scientist S&T Fellowship 2012-13 (Awarded by Indian National Science Academy)
• Visiting Fellowship, University of New South Wales, Australia (Jan -March 2013)
• Invention Award by M/s Intellectual Ventures for students' design project (2012)
• Student Design Contest-NacoMM 2011, First Prize, 2011.
• GE- IITM research Expo Innovation award for student research project 2011 (Second Prize) for “Coconut Harvester Robot"
• Stanford-India biodesign post-doctoral fellowship 2009
• Research grant from IIT Madras for Innovative Student Design Project 2009.
• Visitng Research Fellowship, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2008-2010)
• Design Innovation Award, International Design Exhibition, London, UK., for student design project (2007).
• Post Doctoral Fellowship, National Science &Technology Board (Now known as A-STAR), Singapore. (2000-2002)Institute Research Scholarship, IIT, Madras(1991-1994)
• Fourth Position in University for M.Tech.
• Graduate Scholarship (1989-91), Govt. Of India.
• School First for SSLC examination and Best student award.
• National Merit Scholarship from Govt. of India(1979-1988)