Dr.SGK.Manikandan is currently a Head of welding and coating facilities at ISRO propulsion complex, Indian Space Research Organisation, Mahendragiri. He graduated from Bharathiar University in 1997 and subsequently completed PhD at IIT Madras. He has more than 20 years of research and industrial experience in welding of stainless steels, aluminum alloys, titanium alloys and Superalloys. He has done extensive research on the physical metallurgy and welding of Superalloys. He has also developed welding processes and procedures for the requirement of Indian Space Programme. He has published and presented 20 research publications and guided 6 scholars for Masters Degree and PhD. He is the life member of Indian Institute of Metals, Indian Welding Society and Aeronautical Society of India. He is awarded with team performance excellence award of ISRO and Society of Aerospace Manufacturing Engineers. Dr.D.Sivakumar is currently a senior Scientist in the Materials & Metallurgy Group at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum, India. He graduated from IIT Madras in Metallurgy in 1986 and subsequently completed Ph.D at IIT Mumbai. He has more than 25 years of research and industrial experience in welding and brazing of stainless steels and superalloys. He has also done research on physical metallurgy and welding of maraging steels. He has published and presented more than 50 research publications and guided 5 Ph.D scholars. Prof. Dr. M. Kamaraj is currently Professor in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. After completing his Ph.D. at I.I.T. Madras, he worked as Research Engineer at EWAC Alloys Ltd (Larsen & Toubro Ltd., ) Mumbai. He was also a Research Fellow at Nagaoka University of Technology and STA Fellow at the National Institute of Industrial Safety, Japan. He was a Guest Scientist at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany and a visiting scientist at VSSC, Trivandrum, India. He joined I.I.T Madras, and has more than 25 years teaching, research and industrial experience in the area of mechanical behaviour of materials, welding, surface engineering, and high temperature behavior of materials/welded joints, Tribological behavior of composites and failure analysis of industrial components. He has a patent approval ( Invention: IN-813918), titled “ Highly adhesive nano crystalline diamond coatings on tin coated WC-Co( D/TiN/ Al2O3/ TiCN/WC) tools for industrial applications He has guided 16 Ph.D and 4 MS scholars and Ph.D thesis examiner for several Institutes and Universities. He has published more than 150 research publication in leading national and international engineering journals. He has published books on Surface Modified Biomedical Titanium Alloys (ISBN: 978-1-60876-581-2 (2010) with Mr. Aravind Vadiraj and Surface Technology with V.M. Radhakrishnan (ISBN: 978-81-224-3960-1) and contributed a chapter on “Microstructure and Wear Studies of Alloyed and Austempered Gray Irons for Automotive Applications along with Aravind Vadiraj and G. Balachandran. He was the chairman, Indian Institute of Metals, Chennai Chapter (2009-2010), Chairman, Indian welding Society Chennai centre (2008-2010), Member of ASM international, Chennai chapter (since 2001), and Life member of ISNT, Chennai centre.
