Co-Founder, Director
Dinesh Kabra
Prof. Dinesh Kabra is Forbes Marshall chair professor of Energy Science and Engineering and Professor in department of Physics at IIT Bombay, Mumbai – India. DK is co-director for IIT Bombay-Ohio State University frontier research centre and also faculty in-charge for emerging PV technologies at National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education (NCPRE) at IITB. Prior to joining the IIT Bombay, DK was an independent Herchel Smith Research Fellow at Cavendish Laboratory in University of Cambridge (UCAM), UK. DK is recipient of DST Solar Challenge Award 2022, Early Research Achiever Award 2015 and Best Paper Award 2016 of Industrial Research & Consultancy Centre, IIT Bombay. He is an expert in transferring the fundamental photo-physics and device physics of emerging photonic materials into the design of high-performance devices. His research group has published ~200 peer reviewed reputed publications and more than 20+ international and national patents, many of them licensed and tech-transferred to the industries in the domain of energy and optoelectronics. DK is topic editor for ACS Energy Letters and advisory board for ACS Appl. Mat. & Interfaces, which are flagship international publishing journals in the energy sector. DK is co-founder of Advanced Renewable Tandem-Photovoltaics (ART-PV) India Pvt Ltd in the domain of Solar cells.
Nitika
Co-Founder, Director
Nitika is a Techno commercial expert with experience of over a decade in Business Operations and Administration. Prior to handling operations, Nitika has proven her skills in Sales and Business Development with corporates in Telecom Sector . She also has rich experience of working in an academic environment . Her latest work is in a Section 8 Company to foster and nurture technical projects and startups with potential to commercialise. She has handled operations, coordination and managing successful execution of projects and programs. By education Nitika has learnt management in marketing from Symbiosis college in Pune and Project Management from IIM Indore. She was also briefly associated with Judge Business School, Cambridge. She breezes through technology with as ease as she handles topics on management, operations, culture, art or mythology. Her first hand experience and awareness of the bottlenecks faced by startups as they onset their journey is what helps her handle the operations at ART-PV India.
TECHNICAL TEAM
Dr. Tulsiram MP
PhD, Research Scientist
Amrit Mishra
PhD, Research Scientist
Anam Ansari
MSc, Project Engineer
OPERATIONS TEAM
Priyanka C
Executive Business Operations
ADVISORY BOARD
Juzer Vasi
Juzer Vasi has been with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay since 1981, wherehe is currently Professor Emeritus. He has worked in the areas of microelectronics and photovoltaics. He was the Founding Principal Investigator (2010-2012) of the “National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education” (NCPRE), set up by MNRE at IIT Bombay, and the PV Research Thrust Co-Lead of the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and US (SERIIUS) (2012-2018). Juzer Vasi is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), and a Fellow of IEEE. He received Lifetime Contributions Awards from IIT Bombay in 2013, from INAE in 2018 and from IEEE EDS in 2024. He has a B.Tech. degree from IIT Bombay, and a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University.
M.S Unnikrishnan (Unny)
M.S. Unnikrishnan ( Unny ) is the CEO of IITB-Monash Research Academy, a research institute dedicated to a PhD program in cutting edge technologies and management, jointly promoted by IIT Bombay and the Monash University of Australia. He has previously held the position of M.D. & CEO of Thermax Group for over 13 years and played a pivotal role in the growth, professionalisation and globalisation of the company.
He serves on the boards of KEC International, Kirloskar Brothers, Greaves Cotton. He is also the Chairperson for Livguard Energy Technologies. He is a trustee of “ Akshayapatra,” the largest NGO of India that feeds 19 lakhs/ day underprivileged school children, and Jehangir Hospital, Pune. Unny is also a member of the Governing Councils of TERI and Army Institute of Technology.
Subash Purushotham Pai
Subash Purushotham Pai, CTO of Excel Instruments, is a 66-year-old physicist who joined TIFR as a Scientific Officer in 1981. He worked on processing semiconductor devices, super conductor (YBCO) and CMR materials, and was part of a team that set up a semiconductor processing plant in North Korea. After returning to India, he realized the need to manufacture equipment at a lower cost, leading to the creation of Excel Instruments. The company now employs 175 people and has supplied over 300 systems to various diamond growers. Excel Instruments has also developed flat plate heaters for thin film deposition, magnetic rotary feedthroughs for HV and UHV applications, sputter sources, effusion cells, and UHV systems. In 2015, the Indian Vacuum Society honored him for his outstanding life-time contribution in vacuum science and technologies.
Dr. Walajabad Sampath
Dr. Walajabad Sampath (Co-PI) is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU). He has been a faculty member at CSU since 1985, with a research focus on CdTe photovoltaics since 1991. He is the founder and site director of the NSF I/UCRC (Industry/University Co-Operative Research Center) for Solar Powered Future 2050. His research group has demonstrated CdTe PV with efficiency of 20.14%, one of the highest among universities.
Dr. Balasubramaniam Kavaipatti
Professor Balasubramaniam Kavaipatti is currently a Professor in the Department of Energy Science & Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India. He obtained his Master’s degree from IISc, Bengaluru, India, and his Doctoral degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. After a brief stint at Intel Assembly Technology Division, Chandler, Arizona, USA, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, where he conducted research on carrier selective contacts and light absorbers made from inexpensive and abundant materials for use in photovoltaic and photo-electrochemical devices.
Dr. Pradeep R. Nair
Pradeep R. Nair is a faculty with Dept of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay, Mumbai India. His research interests are in the modeling and simulation of semiconductor devices for energy and healthcare applications. His recent work focusses more on Perovskite based solar cells and light emitting diodes. Prof. Nair obtained his Ph. D from Purdue University, West Lafayette IN USA, M. Tech from IIT Bombay, and B.Tech from NIT Calicut India.