Amaresh Chakrabarti is a Senior Professor and Chair at the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. He has a BE in Mechanical Engineering from IIEST, Shibpur, ME from IISc, Bangalore, and PhD in Engineering Design from University of Cambridge, UK. After PhD, he led for ten years the design synthesis group of the EDC – a CoE in engineering design at University of Cambridge, before joining IISc directly as an Associate Professor.
Prof. Chakrabarti has made several original and outstanding contributions in engineering design and manufacturing research. He is widely recognized as a pioneer for design research in India. His research interests include design synthesis, creativity, sustainability, AI, informatics, and Industry 4.0. His major research contributions include development of empirically validated measures of design creativity, World’s first automated configuration synthesis tool ‘FuncSION’, World’s first biomimetic inspiration tool ‘Idea-Inspire’, and ‘DRM’ – a design research methodology co-developed by him that is widely used as a framework for design research. He is enlisted in the top 2% of researchers in 'Design Practice and Management' in the Stanford University study on global scientific impact of researchers; he is the highest cited researcher from India in this area.
In 2006, Prof. Chakrabarti initiated ‘ICoRD’, India’s first international conference series on research into design. In 2014, he co-initiated India’s first indigenous Smart Factory R&D platform, expanding this in 2019 into a CEFC under the SAMARTH Udyog Programme of Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India. In 2019, he co-initiated ‘I-4AM’, an international conference series on Industry 4.0 & advanced manufacturing. With support from Government of Karnataka, he co-initiated CPDMED, India’s first Tech Business Incubator in elderly healthcare. He also co-initiated the MTech smart manufacturing and PhD in advanced manufacturing programmes at IISc. In 2021, he co-initiated a PG professional certification programme in ‘Digital Manufacturing & Smart Factories’. He also heads the IISc-TCS Innovation Lab, the IISc Press, and the Springer International book series 'Design Science & Innovation'. He chairs the Smart Manufacturing Standards Subcommittee of the Bureau of Indian Standards and has been on the Advisory Board & Board of Management of the Design Society, UK, the CII National Committee on Design, and CII Smart Manufacturing Council.
Prof. Chakrabarti received Jawaharlal Nehru Doctoral Fellowship for University of Cambridge, UK (1987), Overseas Research Students Award by Committee of Vice-Chancellors, UK (1987), Lundgren Award of University of Cambridge (1991), UK Morgans-Grampian Manufacturing Industry Achievements Commendation Award (1994), Heiwa-Nakajima Visiting Fellowship, Japan (2007), UK Royal Society Visiting Fellowship (2010), Cambridge Commonwealth Reciprocal Visiting Fellowship, UK (2014), TUM Ambassador Award, TU Munich, Germany (2014), and ASEM-DUO Visiting Fellowship for Politecnico di Milano, Italy (2020). In 2011, he received an Honorary Fellowship of the Institution of Engineering Designers, UK – its highest honour; he was the first person outside Europe/USA to receive this honour. He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals. Since 2017, he has been the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (AI EDAM), an international journal of Cambridge Univ. Press. Prof. Chakrabarti has been the first EIC from outside USA for the journal in its 36-year history. In 2018, he was recognized as the “Most Outstanding Researcher” in Decision Sciences during 2015-17 with a “Careers360 Outstanding Faculty Award” from the India’s Honourable Union Minister of HRD, Shri Prakash Javadekar. Eighteen of his papers won top paper awards in international conferences. He is also the recipient of the IISc’s Alumni Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering in 2022.
