Consciousness, Cognition, and Contemplative Sciences

Prof. Laxmidhar Behera is Director of IIT Mandi and Senior Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. He earned his B.Sc. (Engg) and M.Sc. (Engg) from NIT Rourkela and completed his Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in 1996. With postdoctoral research at the German National Research Centre for Information Technology, he has over 28 years of experience in teaching and research. His expertise spans intelligent systems, control, vision-based robotics, warehouse automation, brain–computer interfaces, drone technology, and consciousness studies. He has led projects worth over ₹25 crores and collaborated with TCS, Renault Nissan, and BEL. Prof. Behera has supervised 31 Ph.D. students, 70+ master's theses, authored three textbooks, and published over 380 papers. His book Intelligent Control of Robotic Systems won the Best Engineering Book Award (2020–21). He has collaborated with ETH Zurich, University of Texas San Antonio, and others. Dr. Anirban Bandyopadhyay is a Principal Research Scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan. He did Ph.D. in IACS, Kolkata, 2005. 2005-2008 ICYS research fellow at ICYS, NIMS, Japan. In 2008, joined NIMS, built organic jelly based artificial brain, quantum computer, molecular motor based drugs, invented Dodecanogram for deep consciousness measurement, built Polyatomic time crystal based Quantum cryptographic language, written a book “Nanobrain: The making of an artificial brain from a time crystal”, 2020. 2013-2014 visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. Hitachi Science and Technology award 2010, Inamori Foundation award 2011–2012, Kurata Foundation Award, and Sewa Society International member, Japan. Published 197 papers, 42 patents, 43 products invented, 14 inventions commercialized, edited 27 books.

• Defining Dark Matter: Grounded Theory Approach to 'Paazh' the Void Origin of Cosmos in Indian Philosophy.- Exploring the Samkhya Paradigm in Kalidasa's Abhijnanshakuntalam: A Philosophical Analysis.- Harnessing India's Ancient Wisdom: Exploring the Synergy between the Indian Knowledge System and Atmanirbhar Bharat.- Consciousness and Quantum Physics: Confluence of the East and the West.- Psycho-Physical Basis of Food Habits: The Need for Revival of Ancient Indian Health Systems.- A Yogic Neuroscience Framework of Aesthetic Experiences.- Assessing Mental Workload in a Dual N-Back Task Using Eye-Tracker and Machine Learning Techniques.- Measuring the Human Nasal Dominance in the Context of Svara Yoga: A Low-Cost Tool Based on Nasal Airflow Detection.- LJaya Optimization Based Feature Selection Approach for ADHD Classification.- Development and Content Validation of a Yoga-Based Spiritual Well-Being Scale.- Development and Validation of Vipassana Proficiency Scale.- Cerebral Rhythm Analysis and CNN Classification of Meditators and Novices Using Morlet Wavelet.- PEDNet: Preprocessed Ensembled Deep Network for Diagnosis of Epilepsy Seizures Using EEG Image Representations.