Prof. Dipankar Banerjee is the Chairman of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (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 upon Prof. Banerjee its Lifetime Achievement Award.

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 the Director of DMRL, where he led a 1,200-strong team under critical materials applications programmes in defence systems.

In 2003, he was appointed the Chief Controller of R&D at the DRDO and assumed leadership of the organisation’s aeronautical and materials programmes. In this position (up to 2010), he coordinated programmes relating to military engine, combat aircraft, unmanned vehicle, and airborne early-warning systems, and 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 in the institute. He is on the editorial committee of the Annual Reviews of Materials Research and is the associate editor of Philosophical Magazine. Though he has formally retired, Prof. Banerjee is an Honorary Professor and Raja Ramanna Fellow at IISc. He is recognised as one of the leading experts on titanium science and technology in the world.

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), Ohio State University, and University of Michigan.

Prof. Banerjee is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and Indian National Academy of Engineering, and a former president of the Indian Institute of Metals. He was on the Board of Directors of Midhani Ltd. for nearly 14 years and is currently on its Technical Advisory Board. He has also served on the strategic advisory committee of The Metallurgical Society (TMS) 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 chairs the GTMAP (Gas Turbine Materials and Process) programme of the Aeronautical Research and Development Board of India, which funds nearly a hundred projects in various academic institutions and national laboratories.