Keynote Speakers

Dr. Anil Kakodkar

Padma Vibhushan, Chairman, Rajiv Gandhi Science & Technology Commission

Former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, Govt. of India

Anil Kakodkar is an Indian nuclear physicist and mechanical engineer. He was the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India and the Secretary to the Government of India, he was the Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay from 1996–2000.

Apart from playing a major role in India's nuclear tests asserting sovereignty, Kakodkar champions India's self-reliance on thorium as a fuel for nuclear energy.

Prof. Prabhat Ranjan, Ph.D.(UC Berkeley)

Vice Chancellor, D.Y.Patil International University, Pune

He is Former Executive Director, TIFAC, Govt. of India. Currently He is Vice Chancellor of D Y Patil International University, Akurdi, Pune. Before this, for five years, he was heading India's Technology Think Tank, TIFAC as its Executive Director. TIFAC is an autonomous body of Dept of Science and Technology, GOI.

For nearly 20 years he have done research work with Nuclear Fusion. He did modelling and simulation and used this to improve the performance of Tokamaks in India. He was associated will all the three Tokamaks in India (2 running and 1 under development). He have made major contribution to improving the performance of both the running tokamaks.

Dr. Ajay Kumar Jha

President, Institute for Global Agriculture & Technology Transfer Fort Collins, CO, 80524

He has over 20 years of global development leadership experience for the entrepreneurial projects in agriculture enterprise, bioscience and renewable energy including design, development, and implementation of global complex, and multidisciplinary projects for sustainable economic development. Experience for trade and investment for fortune 500 companies and help both the US and Indian companies for global market entry and attract talents.

He is seasoned professional at setting strategic goals, building network and fostering global communications, managed global cross-functional team for impactful business development, trade and investment relation. He have passion and experience to coordinate multi-million dollar grants/contracts, business development and managing large teams for the project implementation. He have managed federal grants and contracts (USDA, USAID, DOD, NSF, World Bank).

Dr. Jae-chun Lee,

Principal Researcher / Adjunct Professor, Mineral Resources Research Div.,Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) Resources Recycling, Korea University of Science and Technology

Dr. Lee received his B.S. (1979) in metallurgical engineering, M.S. (1981) and Ph.D. (1986) in Hydrometallurgy from Hanyang University, Korea. He joined the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) as a senior researcher in April 1986 and was promoted to Principal Researcher in 1998 and became a Distinguished Researcher in 2009.

His research deals with leaching, separation and purification of metals from primary and secondary resources, and material preparation by aqueous processing. His current research focuses on the recycling of valuable metals from industrial waste and waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) by hydrometallurgical routes.

He has authored over 200 articles. In 1998 he received the Honda Award from the Clean Japan Center for the recycling technology of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs).
He was awarded the Order of Science and Technology Merit in recognition of outstanding contributions to the recycling technology in Korea in 2008. Dr. Jae-chun Lee was elected as a member of Materials and Energy Division, the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK) in 2010 and Foreign Fellow, The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) in 2013. He is currently the Editorial Board Member of Hydrometallurgy.

Dr. Jitendra Kumar

Managing Director, Bangalore Bio-Innovation Center, Dept. of IT, BT and S & T, Govt. of Karnataka, Bangaluru

Accomplished and highly experienced in Technology evaluation, Incubation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Life Sciences domain (Healthcare- Pharma and Medical devices/Diagnostics, Agriculture/Food/Nutrition, Environmental Biotechnology, and Industrial Biotechnology).