Prof. Dipankar's Info

Friends of Prof. Dipankar call him 'Dip' or 'Dips'.  He does not have any last name (which he deliberately dropped many years back). His younger friends and students call him by his first name: Dipankar. He is not in favor of titles like 'Prof' or 'Dr' or worst still, students calling him 'Sir'.  Sadly, he is sometimes forced to use the dummy 'Prof' part in his name due to rigid airlines and other reservation systems, which doesn't allow one to exist without a last name!

Dipankar is currently the Chief Scientist at TREELabs Foundation. He has been the unwritten ‘Benevolent Dictator’ at TREELabs. By default therefore, he is also the biggest 'Monkee' in TREELabs ('monk' in the Treelabs' folds).  A scientist and a physicist at heart (some friends affectionately add the word ‘mad’), he is also an inventor and an entrepreneur. Most importantly, he is a ‘Dreamer’. His big dream is to eradicate the age-old curse of poverty from the world, and thereby enable this world to become a better place for life.

He loves teaching and has been an educator. He taught at IIT-Bombay (as an adjunct faculty) for nearly two decades, enthusing an entire generation of young students to learn and become confident in building real engineering solutions. He also loves to interact with school children and has a grand plan to transform kids from the bottom of the economic pyramid. He is in the process of trying out his project with children from far and remote places, to become high-quality entrepreneurs. This he believes will cause a major transformation in our society.

Dipankar did his B.Tech in electrical engineering from IIT-Bombay (graduated in 1988) and subsequently did his PhD from Rice University, USA, in Physics. He had the privilege of working closely with Nobel prize winners (including Prof. Richard Smalley, who was later given the title of 'Father of Nanotechnology'). Some of the experimental and theoretical scientific problems Dipankar solved are at the cutting edge. He found solutions to a 100 year old unsolved problem, but of great contemporary importance, that of solving Maxwell’s equations exactly, analytically. In his scientific pursuits he has publications in prestigious scientific journals such as Science, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review, etc. He has been among the pioneers in the field of scanning probe microscopy and Fullerenes and bucky-balls. He worked in many other areas including ultra-fast lasers, micro-electronics, vacuum systems and foundry technology.

One of his ongoing 'pet' project is to understand and explain science (physics, chemistry, etc.) from first principles, in sufficiently simple ways that a smart high-school kid may unambiguously understand. Most of us seem to learn science, by accepting authority. His approach shuns this method and attempts a more democratic and logical approach by not invoking any authority, but primarily our sense of logic (and often common sense) and simple experiments. He is in the process of writing a book on this subject. His learned friends say that this is perhaps his best invention so far, and can have far-reaching effect on young minds, world-wide.

Regarding his entrepreneurial pursuits, he dived into business even during his childhood and high-school days. This included selling tea at school, to creating a business to manufacture and sell domestic emergency power inverters (to mitigate power-cuts, which was quite rampant during his childhood days). He set up companies in the past, and also helped others within India and abroad, to become successful entrepreneurs.

In his spare time (outside of the sciences and engineering), he indulges in a variety of other hobbies and sports. This includes paragliding, trekking, cycling, martial-arts, photography, writing poems, listening to music, watching movies and documentary films, dabbling in painting, learning languages (yes, including Mandarin), cooking and growing food (perma-culture) and of course most importantly, ‘Dreaming’ ! Dreaming to create a better world for all of us.

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