Prof Dipankar Banerjee is the Chairman of CSTEP. He is the recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (1993) and the Padma Shri (2005), India’s fourth-highest civilian award. In 2008, the DRDO conferred its Lifetime Achievement Award on Prof Banerjee.

Prof Banerjee graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1974 and obtained his doctoral degree from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1979. Subsequently, he worked at the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL) of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

In 1996, Prof Banerjee was appointed Director of DMRL, where he led a 1,200-strong team in developing critical materials for defence systems.

In 2003, he was appointed the Chief Controller of R&D at DRDO and assumed leadership of the organisation’s aeronautical and materials programmes. In this position (up to 2010), he coordinated programmes relating to military engines, combat aircraft, unmanned vehicles, and airborne early-warning systems, as well as DRDO’s interfaces with the Indian Air Force. He co-chaired the monthly reviews of DRDO’s Light Combat Aircraft programme for several years with the Deputy Chief of Air Staff.

Since 2010, Prof Banerjee has been a part of the Department of Materials Engineering at IISc. He served as the coordinator of the Advanced Facility for Microscopy and Microanalysis at IISc and has been a part of the initiative that created an advanced manufacturing centre at the institute. Prof Banerjee is currently Emeritus Professor at IISc. He is recognised as one of the leading experts in the world on titanium science and technology.

Over the years, Prof Banerjee has held visiting positions at some of the most advanced centres of materials engineering, including Carnegie Mellon University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, General Electric Corporate R&D, Laboratoire De Metallurgie Structurale Universite De Paris-Sud (Orsay), The Ohio State University, and the University of Michigan.

Prof Banerjee is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (USA). He is a Former President of the Indian Institute of Metals. He was on the Board of Directors of Midhani Ltd for nearly 14 years. He has also served on the strategic advisory committee of The Metallurgical Society of USA. He presided over the research council of CSIR-National Institute of Interdisciplinary Science and Technology for 9 years and currently chairs the research council of CSIR-CGCRI, as well as the DRDO laboratory DYSL-SM. He has also been on the Board of Governors of IIT Madras. He currently chairs the research council of the Defense Laboratory, Jodhpur, DRDO.