Keynote
Keynote speakers on Day 1
Keynote 1 and 2 on 6th January at 16:00.
Prof. Punya Mishra
Dr. Punya Mishra is Associate Dean of Scholarship and Innovation at Arizona State University. He has faculty appointments with the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College as well as the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. He has an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering (from BITS, Pilani); Masters degrees in Visual Communication (from IDC, IIT Mumbai) and Mass Communications (from Miami University, Oxford Ohio), and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). He is internationally recognized for his work in technology integration in teaching; the role of creativity and aesthetics in learning; and the application of design-based approaches to educational innovation. He has received over $7 million in grants; published over 100 articles and edited 3 books. He is an award-winning teacher, an engaging public speaker, as well as an accomplished visual artist and poet. You can learn more about him at punyamishra.com
Pankaj Jhunja
Pankaj Jhunja is Head of Mobility Services, Tata Motors. The love of taking things apart to discover how they worked, found its way into a career in Design, which started with creating objects to creating enabling environments for design teams. Over the last 25 years he moved from designing simple consumer products to highly technical, industrial and commercial products ; solutions across multiple companies. In Jan 2017 he was charged with setting up a Mobility Innovation Hub for Tata Motors in the Silicon Valley in order to track consumer and technology trends and establish partnerships and collaborations with start-ups; tech companies for possible Product and Service solutions relevant to our markets. Currently leading the Mobility Services function as part of the Corporate Strategy team, to explore Tata Motors play in the Shared Mobility, EV and Connected vehicle space inline with evolving consumer and market trends. This involves working and collaborating with Startups and Technology companies to bring new solutions to market to expand our portfolio of offerings.
Keynote speakers on Day 2
Keynote 3 and 4 on 7th January at 08:45 and Keynote 5 and 6 on 7th January at 17:30.
Devina Kothari
An Indian Industrial Designer, Strategist and an Entrepreneur, Devina's mission is to bring current-day technological advancements to the doorstep of rural and peri-urban India, her passion project, JAYA aims to save 1.2 million lives in India alone through effective routine immunization enabled through digital technology. She co-founded Zuan Design Labs LLP and is also working towards creating an organisation at the confluence of data, technology and experience. She's marked her mettle in design innovations globally with a Red Dot Award and conferred at the 'Power of Asian Design' in Taiwan. While her ideas spread through TEDxBangalore, TEDxEMWS and TEDxIITKharagpur, they germinate through workshops and mentoring sessions at Google: Solve for India, Launchpads, GDGs, Women TechMakers etc.
Rajeev Prakash
Abhishek Verma
Abhishek Verma is a national award winning director and animator. He works as an independent animator, filmmaker and design educator. He is a Young India Fellow (2018 batch) and holds a diploma in Liberal Arts. He has passed out from IDC-School of Design IIT- Bombay in 2014, holding specialisation in animation and film design. He has directed and animated three independent animation films and co-directed short animated web series. He has received 20 awards and screened his animation films at more than 250 festivals across the world. He is currently working on his next short film Kitchen, which is a story on Kitchen Domestication and his long form graphic novel called Manhole.
Abhimanyu Kulkarni
Abhimanyu Kulkarni is the Studio Director Philips Experience Design, India. In this role he manages a multidisciplinary design team of 55 designers based in Bangalore. He works across healthcare and personal health as well as with Philips Research and Philips Healthworks (Philips accelerator for startups). Prior to that, he was working in Philips Design’s Hong Kong branch as Senior design manager for global account of Audio Multimedia applications for 7years.
Abhimanyu graduated from IDC, IIT Mumbai and has worked across multiple locations of Philips in Asia and Europe on a variety of projects and has a number of international design awards to his credit, including CES innovation, ID USA, Hong Kong industries award. In his spare time, Abhimanyu draws cartoons and writes screenplays. A screenplay written by him was the winner of NFDC national script competition in 2014.
Keynote speakers on Day 3
Keynote 7 and 8 on 8th January at 08:45.
Chandni Rajendran
Chandni is a social entrepreneur and designer, who currently runs Tactopus. It is an ed-tech startup that makes mixed-reality learning experiences for children with vision impairment and learning disabilities with an inclusive and playful approach. She graduated from the Masters Program in Interaction Design in 2017.
Prof. Uday Kumar
Dr. D. Udaya Kumar is an Associate Professor and Head of Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India. He is the designer of the Indian Rupee Symbol. He has a PhD and Master’s degree in Design (Visual communication) from Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from School of Architecture and Planning, Anna University, Chennai. Before joining his PhD, he worked in a monthly magazine – Intelligent Computing CHIP for renowned publishing house in Mumbai. His areas of interest include Visual Communication, Design Research and Architecture.