Role of Advisory Board  I  Members of Advisory Board

Atul Kirloskar

Debera Johnson

Eero Miettinen

Garry K. VanPatter

Jacob Mathew

Larry Liefer

Rajiv Bajaj

Ravi Sawhney

Shrikant Nivsarkar

Uday Dandavate

 

Atul Kirloskar
Atul C. Kirloskar serves as Chairman and Managing Director of Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd. Mr. Kirloskar began his career with the erstwhile Kirloskar Cummins Limited in the year 1978, where he started as a trainee and in December 1981, he was appointed as the Chief Executive of Cummins Diesel Sales & Services.

Mr. Kirloskar serves as Chairman of Kirloskar Ferrous Industries Ltd., Kirloskar Kisan Equipment Ltd., and GG Dandekar Machine Works Ltd. He serves as a Director of Kirloskar Systems Limited, Swaraj Engines Limited, Navsai Investments Private Limited and Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Limited. He served as a Non-Executive independent Director of Bajaj Auto Ltd and Bharat Forge Ltd.

Debera Johnson
Debera Johnson, B.I.D., Pratt Institute, returned to teach in Pratt's Department of Industrial Design in 1988. She served as Chairperson of the Industrial Design department from 1998 to 2005 and now directs a two-year program.

Debera also started her own business, first as a photographer, then as an independent video producer and director. She is also an exhibition design consultant, a conference and event planner.

In 2007, she was elected to chair the New York City chapter of Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), a most prestigious association for professional industrial designers.

Eero Miettinen
Eero Miettinen is Group Design Director of Nokia Design. Prior to joining Nokia, Eero worked for the Finnish truck and automobile companies, Sisu and Saab. He is a recipient of Kaj Franck Design Award and is a Director of Design Forum, Finland.

Eero has taught design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology, and has wide professional experience in internationalization of companies and the resulting requirements of designers.

Garry K. VanPatter
GK VanPatter is a Founding Partner in the visual thinking innovation consultancy Humantific and Co-Founder of NextDesign Leadership Institute, New York.

Prior to forming Humantific, he was Innovation VP at Scient, and Co-Founder of Scient's Innovation Acceleration Labs.

GK holds a Master of Science, Degree in Communication Design from Pratt Institute in New York, and an undergraduate degree in Architecture from University of Manitoba. GK has received numerous excellence awards and is a regular speaker at international conferences.

Jacob Mathew
Jacob Mathew is a founder and director of Idiom Design & Consulting Pvt. Ltd. He is an alumni of National Institute of Design. Prior to merging as Idiom Design & Consulting Pvt. Ltd., he was the founder of Tessaract - a space, furniture and product design firm based in Bangalore. Idiom is headquartered in Bangalore and works in different domains such as graphic design, architecture, product design, space design and design management.

Larry Liefer
Larry is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Center for Design Research at Stanford. He is the founder of Stanford D-School. On completing his bioengineering doctoral thesis at Stanford, he worked for NASA, founding a Human Information Processing Lab and worked for three years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich Switzerland.

With a Product Design Masters ('64), Larry retuned to Stanford in '76 and taught in the program.

His founding of the Stanford-VA Rehabilitation Engineering Center is now embodied in the Biomechanics and Bioengineering programs.

Rajiv Bajaj
Managing Director of Bajaj Auto Ltd., Rajiv is a distinction holder in Mechanical Engineering (Pune University) and has a Master’s degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, from the University of Warwick, U.K.

He has been a major contributor to the successful transition of Bajaj into a quality manufacturer of high performance motorcycles by conceiving and executing a realistic and result-oriented plan focused on a few significant issues.

Ravi Sawhney
Ravi Sawhney is the founder of RKS, a firm focusing on Strategy, Innovation and Design. Upon leaving CSU Northridge, Art Center, Ravi took a position at Xerox Advanced Product Group, where he was responsible for integrating Alan Kay's graphical user interface work into the first touch screen interface.

Ravi started RKS in 1980. During the past 27 years RKS has been recognized for its accomplishments, including being in Business Week's Top Ten, three years running and being featured on the cover of Business week.

Shrikant Nivsarkar
A practicing architect and an established furniture and interior designer, Shrikant has designed many corporate offices, institutions, banks, hotels, etc.

His latest achievement is to be elected as the first Indian President of International Federation of Interior Architects.

He is the president of Indian Institute of Interior Designers, member of GATS committee of Council of Architecture. He lectures around the world and is an advisor to many architectural and interior design institutions in India and abroad.

Uday Dandavate
Principal at SonicRim, a global design research company, that drives innovation by helping its clients understand people, cultures and trends, Uday is trained in Industrial Design and User Research.

Uday is associated with many academic institutions, including the Industrial Design Center at the IIT, Mumbai, National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi, and the Department of Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design at The Ohio State University. Currently he is involved in global design research in India as well as other destinations in Asia and in Europe.