65 Notable alumni of Indian Institute of Science

Chittaranjan Mitra, popularly known as CR Mitra and CRM, was an Indian scientist who is best remembered as the second Director of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani. He played a pivotal role in the transformation of the institute from a local engineering college to a reputed university.

Sudhhasatwa Basu is an Indian chemical engineer. He is a former director of Council of Scientific Industrial Research - Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT) in Bhubaneswar, India, and is professor of chemical engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, adjunct professor, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai and professor of AcSIR. His research interests include electrokinetic and electrochemical phenomena...

Prahlada Rama Rao is an Indian aerospace engineer who served as the former director of Defence Research and Development Laboratory, the largest of the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) laboratories in India, known for his contributions to the Indian space programme. He was honoured by the Government of India in 2015 with the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest Indian civilian...

Yogesh S. Shouche is an Indian microbiologist. Currently, he is Principal Investigator of National Centre for Microbial Resource at the National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, India.

Rangachar Narayana Iyengar, also known as RNI, is a civil engineer and professor from India. He was with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for about four decades. He has been the director of Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee (1994–2000). He is currently a Raja Ramanna Fellow, and the Director for the Center for Ancient History and Culture (CAHC) at...

Samir R. Das is an Indian-American Stony Brook University professor who attended Jadavpur University and Indian Institute of Science. He was also associated with Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was former faculty in University of Texas at San Antonio and University of Cincinnati where he conducted research in computer...

Bhagavatula Dattaguru is an Indian engineer and academic. He has received several awards, including the Padma Shri Award, India's fourth highest civilian honour in 2005 in the field of science and engineering.

Prasad V. Tetali is an Indian-American mathematician and computer scientist who works as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His research concerns probability theory, discrete mathematics, and approximation algorithms.

Upadrasta Ramamurty is the President's Chair Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering & Materials Science and Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Prior to joining NTU, he was a professor in the Department of Materials Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India, from 2000 to 2018.

Renuka Ravindran was the first woman to be the Dean of the Indian Institute of Science.

Pisharoth Rama Pisharoty was an Indian physicist and meteorologist, and is considered to be the father of remote sensing in India.

Prem Shanker Goel is an Indian space scientist, former secretary at the Department of Ocean Development, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India and a former director of Indian Space Research Organization. He was honored by the Government of India, in 2001, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.

Dinakar Masanu Salunke is an immunologist and structural biologist. Presently, he is the Director of International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology New Delhi. Earlier he was the Executive Director of newly established Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB), an institution jointly set up by Department of Biotechnology (India) and UNESCO at Faridabad. He is the recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar...

Sanjeev Das is an Indian cancer biologist and a scientist at National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, India. He is well regarded for his studies on tumor suppressor proteins. He is a recipient of the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of...

Dr. Sajal K. Das is currently a professor of Computer Science and the Daniel St. Clair Endowed Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he was the Chair of Computer Science Department during 2013–2017. Prior to that he was a University Distinguished Scholar Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and the founding director of the Center for Research...

Janardhana Swamy served as a Member of Parliament in 15th Lok Sabha representing the Chitradurga Lok Sabha Constituency in the Parliament of India.

Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan is an Indian aerospace and computer scientist. He is a Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Supercomputer Education Research Centre of Indian Institute of Science and a visiting professor of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. Balakrishnan was honored by the Government of India, in 2002, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma...

Uma Chowdhry was an American chemist whose career was spent in research and management positions with E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. She specialized in the science of ceramic materials, including catalysts, proton conductors, superconductors and ceramic packaging for microelectronics.

Rangasami Lakshminarayan Kashyap was an Indian applied mathematician and a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University.

Siva Subrahmanyam Banda is an Indian-American aerospace engineer. He was Director of the Control Science Center of Excellence and Chief Scientist for the Aerospace Systems Directorate at the United States Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He has taught at Wright State University, the University of Dayton, and the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Vaidyeswaran Rajaraman was an Indian computer scientist, academic and writer known for his pioneering efforts in the field of Computer Science Education in India. He is credited with the establishment of the first academic program in computer science in India, which he helped initiate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1965. An elected fellow of all the Indian...

Purushottam Kashinath Kelkar was an Indian scientist who is best remembered for being the founding director of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, which was established in 1959. He was also involved in the planning process for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai and served as its third director, for a period of 4 years. Kelkar was...

Mamannamana Vijayan was an Indian structural biologist.

Raj Jain is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Michael Lobo is an Indian scientist, writer, and genealogist. He is the author of three self-published books on the Catholic community in Mangalore, India.

Yamuna Krishnan is a professor at the Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, where she has worked since August 2014. She was earlier a Reader in National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. Krishnan won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for science and technology, the highest science award in India in the year 2013 in...

H. R. Nagendra is an Indian mechanical engineer, Yoga therapist, academic, writer and the founder vice chancellor of Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, a deemed university located in Bengaluru. He is best known as the personal yoga consultant of Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India and is a recipient of Yoga Shri title from the Ministry of Health and...

Dr. Purnima Sinha was an Indian physicist and was one of the first Bengali women to earn a doctorate in physics. She did work in the field of x-ray crystallography of clay minerals. She was raised by a progressive family in a traditional era. She was able to further her education, pursue her passion of physics, and engage in artistic...

Govindarajan Padmanaban is an Indian biochemist and biotechnologist. He was the former director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and currently serves as honorary professor in the department of biochemistry at IISc and Chancellor of Central University of Tamil Nadu.

Budaraju Srinivasa Murty is an Indian metallurgical engineer. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest science award in India, for the year 2007 in engineering science category. From August 2019 he serves as the Director of Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Additional charge as director of NIT Andhra Pradesh from 14 February 2024...

Harihar Gundurao Dattatreya, popularly known as Dattanna, is an Indian actor who has appeared in more than 204 films and several plays. Alongside his career as an actor, he served in the Indian Air Force as an Aeronautical Engineer for over 20 years and also occupied academic positions with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). He is best known for his work...

Agha Shahi, NI, was a Pakistani career Foreign Service Officer who was the leading civilian figure in the military government of former President General Zia-ul-Haq from 1977 to 1982. A diplomat and technocrat by profession, he joined the Foreign Services in 1951 and held important diplomatic assignments in the United States, China, and the United Nations. He served as the...

Shekhar C. Mande is Structural and Computational Biologist. He was the Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India, and the Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology. Prior to this, he was the Director of National Centre for Cell Science, Pune.

Sreedhara Panicker Somanath is an Indian aerospace engineer served as the chairman of ISRO. Under his chairpersonship, ISRO carried out the third Indian lunar exploration mission named Chandrayaan-3. The lander named Vikram and the rover named Pragyan landed near the lunar south pole region on 23 August 2023 at 18:04 IST, making India the first country to successfully land a...

Mirza Faizan is an Indian-American aerospace scientist who developed the Ground Reality Information Processing System.

Dr. S. K. Shivakumar was an Indian Distinguished Scientist from Karnataka state who worked at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) centres. He was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India, in 2015.

R. Ganesh is a practitioner of the art of avadhana, a polyglot, an author in Sanskrit and Kannada and an extempore poet in multiple languages. He has performed more than 1300 avadhanas, in Kannada, Sanskrit, Telugu and Prakrit. He is known for extempore composition of poetry (āśukavita) during these performances, and even of chitrakavya. He is the only Śatāvadhāni from...

Roddam Narasimha FRS was an Indian aerospace scientist and fluid dynamicist. He was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (1962–1999), director of the National Aerospace Laboratories (1984–1993) and the chairman of the Engineering Mechanics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR, 2000–2014). He was the DST Year-of-Science Chair Professor at JNCASR and...

Rajeshwari Chatterjee was an Indian scientist and an academic. She was the first woman engineer from Karnataka and described herself as an engineering-scientist. During her tenure at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, Chatterjee was a professor and later chairperson of the department of Electrical Communication Engineering.

K. Chidananda Gowda is an Indian academic who served as the Vice-Chancellor of the Kuvempu University, which is located in the state of Karnataka, India. He is also the son-in-law of the Kannada Poet, Kuvempu, after whom the Kuvempu University is named. He has published many papers, mainly in the field of pattern recognition.

Katepalli Raju Sreenivasan is an aerospace scientist, fluid dynamicist, and applied physicist. He studies turbulence, nonlinear and statistical physics, astrophysical fluid mechanics, and cryogenic helium. He was the dean of engineering and executive vice provost for science and technology of New York University. Sreenivasan is also the Eugene Kleiner Professor for Innovation in Mechanical Engineering at New York University Tandon...

Manchanahalli Rangaswamy Satyanarayana Rao was an Indian scientist. He was awarded the fourth-highest civilian award, the Padma Shri, for Science and Engineering in 2010. From 2003 to 2013 he was president of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore, India.

Aluru Seelin Kiran Kumar is an Indian space scientist, member of board of governors of the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur and former chairman of ISRO, having assumed office on 14 January 2015. He is credited with the development of key scientific instruments aboard the Chandrayaan-1 and Mangalyaan space crafts. In 2014, he was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth...

Anil Sahasrabudhe is the present Chairman of National Educational Technology Forum (NETF), chairman of EC National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and Chairman NBA.

Sudha Murty is an Indian educator, author, and philanthropist. She is the Founder-Chairperson of the non-profit charitable organization Infosys Foundation. She is married to the co-founder of Infosys, N. R. Narayana Murthy. In 2024, Murty was nominated as Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha on 8 March 2024 for her contribution to social work and education. Murty was awarded the Padma...

Thalappil Pradeep is an Indian chemist and Institute Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where he holds the Deepak Parekh Institute Chair Professorship. His research focuses on molecular materials and surfaces, including nanomaterials, atomically precise metal nanoclusters, microdroplets and ice.

Imran Siddiqi is an Indian geneticist. Currently, he is a group leader at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and heads a research group.

Amiya Kumar Pujari was an Indian computer scientist and information technology pioneer and leader.

Madabusi Santanam Raghunathan FRS is an Indian mathematician. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences in Mumbai, India. Previously, he was the Head of the National Centre for Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Formerly Professor of eminence at TIFR in Homi Bhabha Chair. Raghunathan received his PhD in Mathematics from...

Saraju Mohanty is an Indian-American professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the director of the Smart Electronic Systems Laboratory, at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Mohanty received a Glorious India Award – Rich and Famous NRIs of America in 2017 for his contributions to the discipline. Mohanty is a researcher in the areas...

Jagdish Chandra Kapur was an Indian social scientist, entrepreneur and the founder of Kapur Surya Foundation and Kapur Solar Farms. He was also the Editor of World Affairs Journal, a publication aiming at and providing a platform for better interaction between the developed and the developing nations. The Government of India honoured him in 2010, with the Padma Bhushan, the...

Sethuraman Panchanathan is an Indian–American computer scientist and academic administrator who served as the 15th Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2020 to 2025.

Rajagopala Chidambaram was an Indian physicist who is known for his integral role in India's nuclear weapons program; he coordinated test preparation for the Pokhran-I (1974) and Pokhran-II (1998).

Veerabhadran "Ram" Ramanathan holds the title of Professor Emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He was Edward A. Frieman Endowed Presidential Chair in Climate Sustainability Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He is also currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. He has contributed to...

Sendurai A. Mani is an Indian-American oncologist and a Molecular Biologist. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and Dean's Chair for Translational Oncology at Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School. He is also the associate director for Translational Oncology at the Legorreta Cancer Center at Alpert Medical School, Brown University. In recognition of...

Ganapathy Baskaran is an Indian theoretical physicist, known for his work on condensed matter physics and strongly correlated quantum materials. Baskaran is an Emeritus Professor of physics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India and holds a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Recently he became a Distinguished Professor at...

Kailasavadivu Sivan is an Indian aerospace engineer who served as the secretary of the Department of Space and chairman of ISRO and Space Commission. He has previously served as the director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center and the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre.

Ramesh Datla is an Indian industrialist and the Chairman of Elico Limited, India's first analytical instruments company, established in 1960. He also serves as Chairman of Elico Healthcare Services, a leading player in the healthcare IT and ITES sector.

Vijay Kumar Saraswat is an Indian scientist who formerly served as the Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Indian Minister of Defence. He retired as the Director General of the DRDO on 31 May 2013. Saraswat is presently a member of NITI Aayog, the Indian Government's apex public policy think...

Ritu Karidhal Srivastava is an Indian scientist and aerospace engineer working in the Indian Space Research Organisation. She was a Deputy Operations Director to India's Mars orbital mission, Mangalyaan. Giving tribute to her excellence in Mangalayaan mission, a Bollywood film Mission Mangal was created where Indian actress Vidya Balan did her role.

Harish-Chandra FRS (11 October 1923 – 16 October 1983) was an American mathematician and physicist who did fundamental work in representation theory, especially harmonic analysis on semisimple Lie groups.

Tamal Krishna Dey is an Indian mathematician and computer scientist specializing in computational geometry and computational topology. He is a professor at Purdue University.

Pinaki Majumdar is an Indian condensed matter physicist and the director of the Harish-Chandra Research Institute. Known for his research on correlated quantum systems, Majumdar is a recipient of the Global Indus Technovator Award of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him...

Dipankar Chatterji is an Indian molecular biologist and the Honorary Professor at Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, a multidisciplinary research institute under the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India. He is known for his pioneering research on bacterial transcription. He is a recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and is an elected fellow of...