06 November 2026
This year, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) honours eight remarkable scientists and engineers with its Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Awards and Young Alumnus/Alumna Medals.
The awards recognise alumni/ae who have made exceptional contributions to their professions, to society, and to the Institute. Each nomination is assessed by a committee under the oversight of the Director, IISc.
This year’s Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna awardees are B S Manjunath, Dipakar Das Sarma, Jagannath Nayak, Maruthi R Akella, and Rajat Moona. The Young Alumnus/Alumna Medals, given to researchers under the age of 40, are conferred on Abhishek Sinha, Geethu Joseph, and Himanshu Joshi.
The awardees will be honoured at a ceremony to be held on 19 December 2026, at the JN Tata Auditorium, IISc.
Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Awardees
B S Manjunath is a globally recognised computer scientist and academic leader, and the Frank Koenig Distinguished Chair in Signals and Systems and Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. His work spans computer vision, content-based image retrieval, and biological image informatics, including BisQue, an open-source platform for scientific image management adopted as a core service of NSF CyVerse. He contributed foundational video descriptors to the MPEG-7 standard, co-founded the company Mayachitra, and has supervised 53 PhD graduates. He completed his ME in Systems Science and Automation (then jointly administered by the Department of Computer Science and Automation and the Department of Electrical Engineering) from IISc in 1987. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, National Academy of Inventors, and AIMBE.
Dipankar Das Sarma is an internationally renowned condensed matter physicist and materials chemist, currently the ANRF National Science Chair and Emeritus Professor at the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, IISc. His work includes the discovery of the covalent-insulator state, kinetic energy-driven ferromagnetism in Sr2FeMoO6, and depth-sensitive photoemission techniques for probing nanocrystals and buried interfaces. He also spearheaded India’s access to international synchrotron facilities, establishing Indo-Italian beamlines at Elettra. He completed his PhD from IISc in 1982 from the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, receiving the Sir J C Ghosh Medal for the best thesis. His honours include the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (1994) and the TWAS Physics Prize (2006).
Jagannath Nayak is a distinguished defence scientist and Director General of Missiles and Strategic Systems at DRDO. His career spans photonics, fibre lasers, and inertial navigation. He led the indigenous development of high-accuracy Fibre Optic Gyroscopes for programmes such as Akash, Nag, and Astra, and the creation of India’s first operational Laser Directed Energy Weapon system. His work has led to complete indigenisation of critical avionics and laser systems. He completed his MSc (Engg) and PhD from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering in 1998 and 2004 and has served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at IISc. His honours include the Aryabhatta Award (2025) and the National Aeronautical Prize (2026).
Maruthi R Akella is a globally renowned aerospace scientist and control systems engineer, who currently holds the Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, USA. His research covers spacecraft attitude estimation, adaptive control, vision-guided robotics, and orbital mechanics. His algorithms provided onboard guidance for Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lunar lander mission, the first US moon landing in over 50 years. He is Founding Director of the Center for Autonomous Air Mobility at UT Austin and Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences. He completed his ME from the Department of Aerospace Engineering in 1994 and is currently a VAIBHAV Fellow hosted by IISc. A minor planet, 5376, has been named “Maruthiakella” in his honour.
Rajat Moona is an internationally renowned computer scientist and technologist, and Director of IIT Gandhinagar. His work has shaped India’s digital infrastructure, from the Smart Card OS Template Architecture (SCOSTA) behind driving licences and e-passports to India’s Electronic Toll Collection system and FASTag. He architected the M3 Electronic Voting Machine, VVPAT, and the National Voters’ Service Portal, and as Director General of C-DAC, advanced national supercomputing through PARAM Yuva II. He completed his PhD from the Department of Computer Science and Automation in 1990. He is a recipient of the National Award for Best Electoral Practices (2016) and the IIT Jodhpur Award for Nation Building for IITians (2026).
Young Alumnus/Alumna Medallists
Abhishek Sinha is a leading theoretical computer scientist, currently a Reader at the School of Technology and Computer Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. He has resolved long-standing open problems in online learning and network optimisation, including a framework that achieves optimal learning and long-term constraint satisfaction simultaneously. His work has appeared in venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, and IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. He completed his ME from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering in 2012. He is a recipient of the INSA Medal for Young Scientists (2021) and the Google India Research Award (2023).
Geethu Joseph is an internationally recognised researcher in sparse control, intelligent sensing, and autonomous systems, and a tenured Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. Her work introduces frameworks for resource-aware control systems and sensing methods for autonomous driving, radar, and wireless communications, with industrial partners including NXP, ASML, imec, and TNO. She is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Sensors Journal. She completed her ME in 2014 and PhD in 2019 from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, receiving the Seshagiri Kaikini Medal for the best ECE thesis. She received the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best PhD Dissertation Award (2022).
Himanshu Joshi is an internationally recognised researcher in computational biophysics, multiscale molecular simulations, DNA nanotechnology, and an Assistant Professor of Biotechnology at IIT Hyderabad. His work spans aquaporins, ion channels, nanopore sequencing, and water desalination, including artificial water channels for ultrafast water transport and DNA origami-based ion channels. He completed his PhD from the Department of Physics in 2017. His honours include the Shell India Computational Talent Prize, the INSPIRE Faculty Fellowship, and a Start-up Research Grant from SERB.
“It is always wonderful to see our alumni making a mark in their chosen fields and contributing to society in so many different ways,” says Prof G Rangarajan, Director, IISc. “The Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Awards and Young Alumnus/Alumna Medals are an opportunity to celebrate their journeys and achievements, and to recognise the many ways in which they continue to inspire our community. We are proud to see them carry forward the spirit of IISc.”
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