Padma Bhushan

Dr. Vijay Bhatkar

Eminent Computer Scientist and Former Chancellor, Nalanda University

Dr. Vijay Bhatkar is one of most acclaimed and internationally acknowledged scientists of India. He was the Chancellor of Nalanda University. In this responsibility, he committed himself to resurrecting the glory of ancient Nalanda, in the context of 21st century. Prior to Nalanda responsibility, he was the Chairman of Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi from 2012 to 2017.

He is best known as the architect of India's national initiative in supercomputing, where he led the development of India's first supercomputer Param in 1990, under the technology denial regime.

In the 80's, Dr Bhatkar substantially contributed to the ushering of electronics revolution in India. He is also credited with the creation of several national research labs and institutions, notably amongst them being C-DAC, ER&DC Trivandrum, IIITM-K, TechnoPark, MKCL, Isquare IT, Multiversity etc. Simultaneously, he has mentored several innovation-based start-ups.

Dr. Bhatkar has served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to PM, Member of the Governing Council of CSIR and a member of the IT Task Force constituted by PM in 1998. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE (USA) and Fellow of ACM (USA), besides being Fellow of CSI, INAE, IETE, NASI, MASc and GES. He has served as the Chairman of e-Governance Committees of Maharashtra and Goa.