Dr. T. Asokan is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Design, and currently the Head of the Department at IIT Madras. He completed his B.Tech. and M.Tech. in mechanical engineering from Calicut University. Dr Asokan received his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in the year 2000. His area of specialization was electro hydraulic controls for robotic applications. He then spent six years as a researcher at the Robotics Research Center, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore working in the area of mechatronic systems and robotics. He was instrumental in developing the Remotely Operated Underwater vehicle and a 7-axis underwater manipulator at NTU, Singapore. Prior to this, he spent 3 years in DRDO as a Scientist. He joined IIT Madras as Assistant Professor in the year 2006 and was promoted as Associate Professor in 2009 and Professor in 2014. He was awarded the Stanford-India biodesign fellowship by the Stanford University, USA in 2009 and has completed a post doctoral fellowship in medical device development at the Stanford University. Dr. Asokan is  a visiting Fellow of the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is currently the national secretary of The Robotics Society. His areas of teaching and research are Robotics, Product design, and Engineering System design. Dr Asokan has published more than 120 papers in International Journals and conferences and has filed 20 patents in India, USA and Singapore. He has supervised 11 Ph.D and 9 MS students and currently supervising 6 Ph.D, 3 MS and 6 dual degree students. He is actively involved in many sponsored research projects with an approximate budget of Rs. 500 lakhs, sponsored by DRDO, ISRO, DST, NRB and other sponsoring agencies.