Director, IIT Mandi
Prof. Laxmidhar Behera
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi
Kamand Campus
Distt.Mandi - 175075,
Himachal Pradesh
Personal Webpage
Prof. Laxmidhar Behera
About Director
Prof. Laxmidhar Behera is the Director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi, a position he has held since January 2022. He holds the position of senior Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur.
Prof. Behera earned his B.Sc. (Engg) and M.Sc. (Engg) degrees from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela, in 1988 and 1990, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at IIT Delhi in 1996. He pursued his post-doctoral research in German National Research Centre for Information Technology, Sankt Augustin.
With over 28 years of research and teaching experience, Prof. Behera has made significant contributions to intelligent systems and control, vision-based robotics, warehouse automation, brain-computer interfaces, drone technology, consciousness studies and mental healthcare. He has established industrial collaborations with organizations such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Renault Nissan, and BEL Bangalore. He has successfully executed sponsored research projects of more than 25 Crores.
Prof. Behera has supervised 31 Ph.D. students to completion and currently supervising 14 PhD students. He has also supervised more than 70 master's dissertations. He has authored three graduate-level textbooks, and more than 380 publications that include 123 peer-reviewed journal papers, 238 conference papers, and 26 book chapters.
His book entitled Intelligent Systems and Control published by Oxford University press has been prescribed as a graduate level text book in many Universities across the world. He published another book on Intelligent Control of Robotic Systems by CRC press Taylor & Francis – this book has been selected as the best Engineering book of the year 2020-21.
He has established international research collaborations with ETH, Zurich, University of Texas, San Antonio, University of Edinburgh, UK, University of Ulster, UK, NAIST, Japan, and Deakin University, Australia. He has worked as Reader at University of Ulster, UK during 2007-2009 and has taken up visiting professor assignments at ETH Zurich, and FHG, Germany. He also worked as TCS affiliate faculty during 2021-2022.
Prof Behera’s team secured 3rd position in the Amazon Robotics Challenge 2017 among top 16 team across the globe and 4th position in the stow-cum-pick event held at Nagoya, Japan. Six of his papers have been given best paper awards in International/National conferences. He received the prestigious National Systems Gold Medal by the Systems Society of India in 2023. He is a distinguished alumnus of NIT Rourkela. He is a fellow of INAE. He is currently serving as the Associate Editor for IEEE Transaction on SMC: Systems.
Besides AI and Robotics, Prof Behera pursues an active interest in the holistic study of mind, brain and consciousness within the framework of Indian Knowledge Systems. He carries out research work concerning consciousness bio-markers through administration of anaesthesia, quantum perception, quantum brain, therapeutic impact of Indian classical music, mantra and yoga on subjects suffering from mental stress and other kinds of psychic disorders.
Besides academics and research work, Prof Behera has been active in social sectors as well. He runs a free girl school in Nandagaon, Vrindavana. He established a new campus for Bhaktivedanta Gurukula in an area of 75 acres in Vrindavana in 2019 where 400 students avail boarding facility. This gurukula style Vidyalaya inculcates character among students as they learn to live among cows, organic farms and a spiritual ambience centred around values hidden in Bhagavad Gita. He is also pioneering to establish Bhaktivedanta University dedicated to Indian Knowledge System in Vrindavana.
During the initial lockdown because of COVID pandemic, he distributed free cooked food packets to hungry children for 50 days:
https://odishabytes.com/this-odia-professor-feeds-1000-daily-around-iit-kanpur-campus/
He has been teaching the universal principles of peace through Bhagavad Gita since for the last 27 years to youth - his recent five-day sessions during COVID were attended by 400+ daily for five days:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9axR1BXMifk
He has launched an online course on Bhagavad Gita both in English and Hindi in a systematic way with scientific temper. The initiative is known as Learn Gita Live Gita.
https://learngitalivegita.com/