Poonam and Prabhu Goel Chair
Mrs. Poonam & Dr. Prabhakar Goel (BT/EE/1970) instituted the Poonam and Prabhu Goel Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur. Dr. Goel is an Indian-American researcher and an entrepreneur. After completing his B.Tech from the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur in 1970, he went on to pursue PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Post his doctorate, Dr. Goel joined IBM's EDA organization where he developed PODEM Automatic test pattern generation & Verilog hardware description language, one of his most famous works.
Current Occupant
Prof. Mainak Chaudhuri
(May 2026 - May 2029 )
Prof. Mainak Chaudhuri, from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur, specializes in computer hardware and computer architecture. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University and is a recipient of the Technology Excellence Award.
Prof. J.K. Bera
(Sep. 2025 - Sep. 2028)
Prof. Jitendra Kumar Bera, from the Department of Chemistry at IIT Kanpur, has research interests in bimetallic synergism, small molecule activation, metal-ligand cooperativity, n-heterocyclic carbene, and green chemistry. He received his Ph.D. from IISc Bangalore. Prof. Bera is a recipient of the Bronze Medal of the Chemical Research Society of India, the Swarnajayanti Fellowship (DST), and the Ramanna Fellowship (DST). He is also a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and has served as a member of the International Advisory Board of the XXV ICOMC (Lisbon, 2012) and the XXVI ICOMC (Sapporo, Japan, 2014).
Prof. Ashok Kumar
(Jun. 2024 - Jun. 2027)
Prof. Ashok Kumar from the Department of Biological Sciences & Bioengineering, IIT Kanpur, has research interests in biomaterials, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, stem cell research, bioprocess engineering, environmental biotechnology, smart polymers, drug delivery, and cryogel-based technologies. His recognitions include the TATA Innovation Fellowship (2013), Madhav Rao Scindia Memorial Award (2013), Samsung-GRO Research Award (2012), and FAOB Executive Board Membership (2008). He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and the National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS), India.
He earned his Ph.D. jointly from IIT Roorkee and the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in Sweden and Japan. Before joining IIT Kanpur in 2004, he served as a faculty member at Lund University, Sweden.
Former Occupant
Prof. Amey Karkare
(Jul. 2022 - Jul. 2025)
Prof. Amey Karkare, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, research interests include intelligent Tutoring Systems, Program Analysis, Compiler Optimization, and Functional Programming. He did his B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur in 1998 and Ph.D. from IIT Bombay in 2009. Dr. Karkare received the prestigious Infosys fellowship during his Ph.D. and P. K. Kelkar Young Research Fellowship at IIT Kanpur. He has been a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond, and IIT Bombay.
Prof. Pratik Sen
(Apr. 2022 - Apr. 2025)
Prof. Pratik Sen, Department of Chemistry, research interests include Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy, Single Molecule Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Spectroscopy. He has received several awards and recognition for his research, which include , Young Scientist Medal from Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi in 2012; Young Faculty Research Fellowship from IIT Kanpur, 2015-2017; Member, Indian National Young Academy of Sciences (INYAS), 2016-2020; Young Faculty Research Fellowship, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India in 2018, Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2021 and Bronze Medal of Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) in 2021. He earned his doctorate from the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Jadavpur, Kolkata, India, in 2006.
Prof. Jayant K. Singh
(Feb. 2021 - Jan. 2024)
Prof. Jayant Kumar Singh, Department of Chemical Engineering, research interests are Nanotribology, Multi-scale modeling of micro/nano devices, Crystallization at nanoscale, Selective adsorption and separation, Thermophysical behavior of complex fluids, free energy calculations. He heads the Computational Nanoscience Laboratory & Laboratory for Interfacial Science that works on development of new materials for energy, environment and health applications. Prof. Singh is the recipient of prestigious JSPS Invited Fellowship (2017), Class of 1970 Reseach Fellowship (2013-2016), Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (2012). He earned his Doctorate from the University of Buffalo, New York in 2004.
Prof. Mainak Chaudhuri
(May 2019 - Apr. 2022)
Prof. Mainak Chaudhuri, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, specializes in computer architecture. In the year 2010, he spent eleven months as a visiting researcher at Intel Corporation. His research contributions during this time significantly influenced the design of the cache hierarchy in the Skylake client and server processors. Prof. Chaudhuri has collaborated with the Intel Achitecture Group and the Intel Microarchitecture Research Lab for nearly a decade contributing to several research papers and a number of patents. He was a recipient of Intel's Technology Excellence award in the year 2018. Professor Chaudhuri has published several research papers in the top-tier computer architecture conferences and journals. His research has won two best paper awards at the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), a top-tier venue for publishing computer architecture research results. Prof. Chaudhuri is recipient of the IBM Faculty award and Microsoft Research India Young Faculty Award.