SAEINDIA Aerospace Roundtable

A globally recognized Aerospace Expert with more than four decades of experience, Dr. Bharadvaj holds solid academic credentials in Aerospace Engineering and Management - B.Tech. from IIT Madras (India); M.S. & Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (USA), and an MBA from University of California, Irvine (USA). During his distinguished career of 40+ years, operating both from the US and India, Dr. Bharadvaj has excelled as a Researcher, Technologist, Systems Thinker, Strategic Planner, Program Manager, and Inspirational Leader. He has held numerous leadership positions at Boeing, retiring recently as the Managing Director of Boeing’s India Engineering & Technology Center, the largest such Boeing Center outside the US. Dr. Bharadvaj was also a member of the faculty of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering at Boston University for several years and an Adjunct Professor at other universities in the US. Dr. Bharadvaj has been an active member of the broader technical community for many years and has contributed to the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA), NASSCOM, SAE International and SAEINDIA. He established the Aerospace segment within SAEINDIA in 2009 and has brought together various industry leaders in India to strengthen aerospace activities in SAEINDIA. He was President of SAEINDIA during 2018-2020 and is currently an Advisor to the Managing Committee and Chairman of the Building Committee. Dr. Bharadvaj has been recognized with several prestigious awards for his many contributions over the years. Notable ones include: • Team Excellence Award and Group Achievement Award from NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Administration) in the US. • Quality Hero, Process Management Role Model, CEO Recognition, and Chairman’s Safety Award from The Boeing Company. • Awards and recognition from a broad array of organizations such as Sigma-Xi Scientific Research Society, Beta-Gamma Sigma Business Honor Society, American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, Industrial Engineering & Operations Management Forum, and most recently an “Honorary Doctor of Science” from Hindustan Institute of Technology & Science, Chennai, India. He is an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and an Honorary Member of SAEINDIA. He is also an Invited Member of the Research Council of the National Aerospace Laboratories. Dr. Bharadvaj is an active writer and speaker at various Industry, Academic and Government forums, and shares his knowledge and experiences with a wide audience.

Dr. Dipankar leads advanced technology and exploratory R&D in several areas at Ansys Inc. including High Performance Computing. In addition, he leads Ansys’s Academic Program which includes coordinating collaborative research and education partnership programs with Academia centered around engineering simulation. Prior to taking this role, Dipankar was responsible for Ansys Inc.'s product strategy and planning and corporate product management functions. Dipankar obtained his Ph.D. in the area of Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer from the University of Minnesota. After his graduation, he held engineering and product management positions at Creare Inc. and Fluent Inc. where he was part of the founding group and the Chief Technology Officer. He is a member of the ASME and the AIAA and has technical publications in journals, conference proceedings and trade magazines.

Dr. Ravi Kumar G. V. V. is Associate Vice President and Head Advanced Engineering Group (AEG) of Engineering Services, Infosys. He has led many innovation and applied research projects over the past 25 years. His areas of expertise include mechanical structures and systems, knowledge-based engineering, composites, artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems, AR, VR, and Industry 4.0. He is involved in the development of commercial products like AUTOLAY (CADDS-COMPOSITES), Nia Knowledge and KRTI 4.0. He contributed to many Industry 4.0 implementation projects and played a key role in the development of Industry 4.0 maturity index under the umbrella of Acatech, Germany. He is also involved in various initiatives of the World Economic Forum (WEF) fourth industrial revolution technologies in production. He is the Chair of G-31 and member of HM-1 technical committees of SAE International contributing to various aerospace standards development. Dr. Ravi Kumar has published over fifty technical papers and five patents. He has a PhD and an MTech in Applied Mechanics from IIT Delhi, and a BE (Honors) from BITS Pilani, India. He won many awards including James M. Crawford Executive Standards Committee Outstanding Achievement award from SAE International and Corporate Excellence Award from American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin.

Kallappa is the Director of Boeing Research and Technology- India (BR&T-I). He joined Boeing in 2014, as Senior Manager of Systems, Support & Analytics, Integrated Technology Team. Currently, he manages a diverse portfolio of research and technology work in Aerodynamics, Structures, Materials, Manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Air Traffic Management. Additionally, he manages the Product Analysis & Teardown Lab Kallappa has over 25 years of experience in the aerospace, defense and automotive industry. Prior to Boeing he worked at General Motors and Pratt & Whitney in USA and Maruti-Suzuki Motors in India. He has worked in R&D, engineering and manufacturing. He has 14 patents in diverse areas such as Rotordynamics, Mechanical Design, Electric Motors and Machine Learning. He has a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University, USA and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Dr. S.N. Sridhara is a Post-Graduate and Ph.D. Degree holder in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Dr. S.N. Sridhara started his career as lecturer in 1987 and went on to climb up the ladder to hold the positions of Professor, Dean, Principal and Director of various technical institutes and Universities. During his service, Dr. Sridhara has developed expertise in Pedagogy, Research and Education Administration and has contributed in terms of developmental activities in all these three fields at all the institutions he served. He was also connected to industry through consultancy and has delivered training programmes to engineers and managers of corporate such as GM, GE, M & M, BOSCH, Tata Motors, Schnieder Electric, and DRDO. He has in depth expertise in technical and managerial topics such as Automotive Power Train, Thermal Engineering, Heat Transfer Solutions, Aircraft Propulsion, Rocket Propulsion, DRONE, CFD, Fluid Flow through turbomachines, OBE, Bloom's and Accreditation (NBA, NAAC). He guided eight research scholars to their PhD and produced more than 150 research papers in reputed internal journals and conference proceedings. He has successfully carried out several research and consultancy projects from government and private agencies. He has been awarded with ‘Best-Principal’ award centrally from ISTE, New Delhi, and in the state by Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka. He has also won the Vocational Excellence Award from Rotary International. He is the life member of prestigious professional bodies such as Aeronautical Society of India, Combustion Institute (India), Fellow of Institute of Engineering (India) and Vice-Chair of Academic Council of ASSOCHAM of South India. His contributions to the professional growth of industry and education through these professional bodies are highly placed. Dr. S.N. Sridhara is leading Hindustan University, Chennai in the position of Vice Chancellor.

Uma Maheshwar is the Chief Consulting Engineer for 700+ member GE Aviation India engineering team at Bangalore. The team is involved in design & development of next generation propulsion systems, support of aircraft engine fleet and development of customized digital and engineering software. Uma has 29+years of experience in setting up & leading large organizations in Engineering, Research & Development sector. Uma joined GE Aviation in 2001 and since then held many leadership positions in Aviation Engineering. He was instrumental in setting up & leading 200+ member world-class Advanced Technology teams at Bangalore for GE Aviation. Uma played key role in design & development of 7 new aircraft engine programs covering full life cycle engineering. Prior to GE, Uma held positions with Larsen & Toubro (L&T) for 8years. During his association with L&T, Uma lead engineering of 25 mega plants for Oil& Gas, Fertilizer, Power, Petro-chemical, Defense, Nuclear sectors involving design, manufacturing, and commissioning. Uma has set up and lead Advanced Design & CAE team at L&T’s largest manufacturing plant-Hazira works. He was one of the Management Representative to set up Engineering Services Company for L&T. Uma holds Aerospace MBA from Toulouse Business School- France and M.E in Mechanical Engineering. He has presented papers/publications/keynote sessions in 200+ National & International conferences. Uma was recognized with many awards and is a member of Global ASME Committee, SAE India Aerospace Board, NAFEMS India Board, NASSCOM Engineering, R&D Council, industry bodies and academic council.

At Collins Aerospace, Sasi leads highly specialized engineering team that supports design, development, manufacturing, and aftermarket for engine nacelles across most civil airframes such as wide body, narrow body and business jets. Sasi has over 21 years of experience in the Aerospace domain, mostly in the Aero Engines field, working for 2 major engine companies of the world – GE Aviation and Rolls-Royce. He has extensive technical and leadership experience in design, development and certification of large commercial aero engines such as GE90, GEnx and Trent XWB. He was instrumental in set-up of Rolls-Royce Bangalore Engineering Center for Civil and Defense Aerospace businesses and bringing work to the center related major NPI projects (such as XWB) and technology demonstrator projects from RR UK, Germany and the USA. In the RR India Centre, he led the Design Engineering organization that comprises of Systems Design, Sub-system & Component Engineering, Materials, Supply Chain and Services. He is an active member of ASME India Gas Turbine chapter and supported in leadership capacity for various activities of this Forum in India. Sasi holds a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras and Executive General Management certification from IIM Bangalore.

Amit Agarwal leads the technical team of Ansys India, serving customers across India, ASEAN and ANZ. He works closely with strategic customers across industries and has led many crucial campaigns for Ansys India including ones on customer retention, new and emerging products and the global campaigns on customer success stories and industry best practices. He has also initiated successful campaigns on academic relationships and key account development. In his earlier role, Amit was instrumental in developing an industry focused sales and technical team at Fluent India serving India and South East Asia. He has worked closely with key academia, private and government organization and multinational design centres across industries in India. With B. Tech., Aerospace Engineer from I.I.T. Bombay, Amit has been with Ansys for 25 years, having started his career with the former Fluent organization.

Guptha Kuncham, Post Graduate in mechanical engineering, Post diploma in advanced mechanical engineering and software systems. Delivery head for the aero engines practice charge at Cyient Working in the aero engines’ domain for the last twenty years and actively sourcing patterners in GTF engine development. Had a couple of publications in the areas of simulation. An early adopter of RPA in engineering simulation. Let the development of AI/ML-based workflow management tool to manage quality notification/concessions efficiently. We were driving digital transformation in the area of MBD, Digital thread, Industry 4.0, and platform-based AI/ML-based solutions for aftermarket solutions. Worked as a scientist at the department of atomic energy, Instrumental in deploying high-speed ( RPM more than 100,000) rotors for strategic application and turbomachinery application for cryogenic engines.

Gurram Venkateswararao is Senior Engineering Section Manager leading Advanced design tools team at GE Aviation India. His team develops physics based engineering design, modelling & Simulation Software tools and methods for GE Aviation and GE Power businesses. Gurram has 21+ years of experience in engineering design, technology development and also leading teams in engineering. Gurram joined GE Aviation in the year 2000. He spent first 15 years in heat transfer and secondary fluid systems design and played significant role in advancing the thermal system designs and technology. After spending 15years in heat transfer group, he moved to services engineering and played significant role in building the fleet engineering teams and led the engineering support to Maintenance, Repairs and Overhaul (MRO) shops and regional airline customers. Currently he leads Advanced design tools team at GE Aviation. Gurram holds masters degree in mechanical engineering from Jadavpur university in heat power engineering specialization.

Alexander Ridgeway (Alex) is the Senior Application Engineer, Channel Partner Development Manager and APAC Engineering Supervisor for AGI, An Ansys Company. He supports space agencies, space situational awareness operators, satellite operators and defense/intelligence groups in Asia, Pacific, Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Alex has detailed experience working with drones, military aircraft, communications, electronic warfare, C4ISR, maritime and border surveillance over his 10 years at AGI.