DR. KRISHNAN BALASUBRAMANIAN

Chair Professor in Mechanical Engineering
Professor-in-Charge, Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Head of Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE)

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

Krishnan Balasubramaniam is currently Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and also serves as the Head of the Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE) at IIT Madras. His research focus is in the field of Nondestructive Evaluation. He obtained his PhD from Drexel University (USA) in 1989.  He is a Life Fellow of the Academia NDT International, Life Fellow of the Indian Society of Nondestructive Testing (ISNT) and a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers. He has over 200 technical publications and has presented papers at several national and international meetings.  He has also directed 12 PHD student dissertations and 25 MS student thesis.  He has conducted more than 4 million US dollars in contract research while in US and currently has several sponsored research projects at IITM totaling more than 25 Crore Rupees. He has also served as a consultant to many multinational companies including GE,  Corning Inc., BF Goodrich, Gillette, Caterpillar, Lockheed-Martin, Nippon TV, Karta Technologies, Sieger Spintech, etc.

He is currently a consultant to US Air Force, HAL, Indian Navy, ARDE, GE, etc. He is currently the Principal Investigator in several sponsored research projects funded by DST, DAE, ADA, ISRO and DRDO organizations. He is an active member of ISNT, ASNT, SAMPE, ASME, UIA and ASA and has organized several international symposiums and workshops.  He was conferred with the ROY SHARPE PRIZE by the British Institute for NDT for the year 2012. He was also awarded the ISTEM Entrepreneurial Faculty Member Award for his entrepreneurial activities by Auburn University, USA in 2011 and the NATIONAL NDT AWARD 2010 by the Indian Society for NDT. He is a Board Member of the World Federation of NDE Centers.

He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Nondestructive Evaluation (ISNT) and as the South-East Asia Editor for the Journal of Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation (Taylor and Francis). He also serves as the Associate Editor of Ultrasonics (Elsevier) and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Structural Longevity (Techscience). He is lead recipient of prestigious DRDO Academy Excellence Award for ‘Outstanding and Internationally recognized contribution in the field of NDT in collaboration with DRDO Laboratories leading to innovative and implementable products for DRDO Stakeholders’ as  Head, Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, IIT Madras  (Award for year 2015, received in April 2017).  He was awarded the Gandhian Technology Innovation award for 2018 for a project developing super-resolution imaging systems conferred by BIRAC-SRISTI.  For his contributions he was conferred with the prestigious Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation Fellowship and IIT Madras Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.