Pre-Conference Workshop on

Dipankar Deb is a Professor in the Center for AI and Robotics at IITMandi. He has been a Professor in Electrical Engineering at Institute of Infrastructure Technology Research and Management (IITRAM) Ahmedabad since January 2019. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and has served a couple of years at IIT Guwahati as an Assistant Professor (AGP 8000) during 2010-2012. He has over 6 years of Industrial experience both in New York (USA) and GE Global Research (Bengaluru) India. From July 2015 to Jan 2019, he has served as an Associate professor, and from Jan 24, 2019, onward he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering. He holds 6 US patents, and 11 Indian Patents, and has published 59 SCI indexed Journal articles and 40+ International conference papers. He has also authored 12 books with reputed publishers like Springer and Elsevier. He is a Book Series editor with Springer for the series: "Studies in Infrastructure and Control". He is also a Book Series Editor with CRC Press on Control Theory and Applications, and an Associate Editor for IEEE Access. He has also worked extensively in areas such as Adaptive Control, Active flow control, Renewable Energy, Cognitive Robotics and Machine Learning. He is listed in the top 2% of researchers word-wide in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022

Prof. Ts. Dr. Norita Md Norwawi is currently an Academic Fellow at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), bringing over 30 years of experience in computer science and artificial intelligence. She previously served as Professor at USIM from 2014 to 2024, during which she held several key leadership positions, including Dean, Director, and Head of Research Units. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Universiti Utara Malaysia and specializes in machine learning, temporal data analytics, and AI ethics.
A certified professional technologist, Prof. Norita is an active member of prominent international organizations such as Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Malaysian Academy of Professors. Internationally recognized, she has served as a guest speaker and visiting scholar at global platforms including the United Nations, University of Oxford, and UNESCO-related events. Her research and development activities focus on responsible and ethical AI, smart applications, and sustainable innovation, with extensive publications in indexed journals. She is also a Senior Fellow of the AI for Developing Countries Forum (AIFOD) and a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (FASc).

Dr Hitesh Shrimali is a full Professor in the School of Computing & Electrical Engineering at IIT Mandi, and serves as a Member of its Board of Governors (BoG). He is also associated with the board of directors, IIT Mandi Catalyst (the institute’s technology incubator), reflecting his broader involvement in institutional governance, academic-innovation interfaces, and support for emerging technology ventures linked to IIT Mandi. His academic journey began with a B.E. from Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad, followed by an M.Tech. from IIT Kharagpur and a PhD from IIT Delhi. Before joining IIT Mandi as a faculty member, he worked as a Senior Design Engineer at STMicroelectronics (Greater Noida) and later undertook postdoctoral research at the University of Milan, in collaboration with INFN Milano. At IIT Mandi, Dr. Shrimali has held numerous administrative and coordination roles over the years: he was Dean (Students), IIT Mandi, served as Nodal Officer for the nationally funded PhD scheme under Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY), Discipline Core Committee (DCC) Chair-VLSI, Programme Coordinator for BTech/MTech-VLSI, Coordinator of the Institute’s IP & Technology Transfer Cell, and chaired several important committees — including the school publicity committee, BTech (EE) curriculum-review committee, Student Affairs Panel (SAP), and BTech IC-PFG. He has also served as Course Coordinator for the M.Tech (VLSI) program, Head of the Science and Technology Council (SNTC), Faculty Advisor for the BTech and M.Tech VLSI/EE batches, and held roles such as Chief Election Officer for the Student Gymkhana. Additionally, he has been serving as Treasurer for the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society of the Delhi Chapter for the past three years. In research, Dr Shrimali specialises in the design and testing of radiation-hard circuits (such as CMOS silicon detectors), analogue and mixed-signal VLSI design (On-chip analogue-to-digital data Converters), modelling radiation effects on analogue/mixed circuits, and on-chip instrumentation. Under his guidance, his group at IIT Mandi has successfully tape-out several chips, including dosimetry applications, a Thermoelectric cooler (TEC) controller, high-voltage front-end electronics for particle detection, EEG front-end circuits, low-noise instrumentation amplifiers for sensors, hybrid flash-SAR ADCs, frequency synthesisers, etc. On the recognition front, Dr Shrimali is a recipient of the Young Faculty Research Fellowship (YFRF) awarded by MeitY, Government of India. He has also received awards from IIT Mandi for teaching and institutional service, including the “Excellent and Consistent Teaching Performance Combined with Contributions Towards Institute Services” (2021) and the “All-Rounder Contribution Award” (2017). He is also a distinguished alumnus awardee from Nirma University, Ahmedabad (2017), and a Young Faculty Fellow of IIT Mandi.