Amit Prashant is a Professor in Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India. After his PhD and post-doctoral work in the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (USA), he went on to work as an Assistant Professor in IIT Kanpur from 2005 to 2010, before joining IIT Gandhinagar in 2010. His research interests include constitutive modeling for granular materials, numerical modeling of geotechnical structures, and earthquake geotechnical engineering. In 2005, he received the Young Researcher Fellowship Award from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (USA) during the 3rd M.I.T. Conference on Computational Fluid and Solid Mechanics. He has also been awarded the Excellence Award in Institution Building and Outreach in 2013 and 2015 respectively. Prof Prashant has published more than 60 research articles in reputed journals and conferences, and organizes activities to encourage student initiatives and increase industry-academia interaction. Ajanta Sachan is an Associate Professor in Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India.After her B.E in Civil Engineering, she worked in WAPCOS Limited and IIT Kanpur, India before pursuing her PhD in University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA. Her research interests include material characterization, studying shear strength and compressibility behavior in soils, etc. Dr Sachan serves as a reviewer in 7 journals and is a member of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), USA, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), USA and the National Information Centre for Earthquake Engineering (NICEE), India. She has published more than 50 research papers, and has served in various administrative capacities. Chandrakant S. Desai is a Regents' Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. After completing his MS and PhD from Rice University Houston and University of Texas, Austin in 1966 and 1968 respectively, he joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Waterways Experiment Station, where he worked till 1974. Subsequently, he joined The University of Arizona, where he has served on various capacities. Prof Desai has authored or edited 23 books and over 345 research papers over the course of his career, which has involved the development and application of constitutive laws with design and fabrication of new and innovative test devices, and of computer methods for solution of a wide range of problems in civil, mechanical and electronics engineering. He has been the founding president of the IACMAG and founding Editor-in-Chief for two international journals in Geomechanics. He has received many awards and distinctions, and is a member of a number of technical societies including an elected Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, USA.
