Pramod Rastogi

He received his MSc degree from the University of Lucknow, MTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and doctorate degree from the University of Franche Comté in France. His research activities are principally in the area of holographic interferometry, speckle metrology, fiber optics sensors, phase shifting and moiré. He is the author or coauthor of more than 175 scientific papers of which more than 140 are published in peer-reviewed archival journals. He is also the author of book chapters, Encyclopaedia articles, and has edited several books in the field of optical metrology. His guest-edited three special sections on “Optics in Switzerland” for Optical Engineering in 1995 are even today an invaluable source of reference relative to optical engineering activities in Switzerland both at the academic and industrial levels. He has guest-edited over a dozen special dedicated issues in archival journals.   He has also chaired and organized several international symposiums, such as, the International Conference on Applied Optical Metrology, Balatonfüred, Hungary, June 8-11, 1998; or the Conference on Trends in Optical Non-destructive Testing, Lugano, Switzerland, May 2-5, 2000, or the Conference on Advanced Phase Measurement Methods in Optics and Imaging, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland, May 16-21, 2010 etc.   He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1993) and a Fellow of the Society of the Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (1995). He is also a recipient of the “Hetényi Award” for the most significant research paper published in Experimental Mechanics in the year 1982.  He was Elected as a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) in 2014. He was recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award, 2014. The Dennis Gabor award is presented annually in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in diffractive wave front technologies, especially those which further the development of holography and metrology applications.   He was an honorary visiting Professor at the IIT Delhi between 1999 & 2003.   Since 2000 he has also been active in laying groundwork for collaboration with the Indian Institutes of science and technology. Between the years 2000 & 2004, he was doing this as a part of his broader activity as in-charge of relations with Asia. His initiatives have led to academic exchange programs involving faculty and students with a view to fostering networking, research linkages and partnerships. To cite a few of his many initiatives: his active contribution to the holding of a high level Indo Swiss Workshop on Science & Technology at Bangalore in 2003; the setting up of ISJRP - the pilot project on bilateral partnership in S&T between Switzerland and India - in 2004; developing ISBRI (Indo-Swiss bilateral research initiative) in 2006; etc. He remained as the main coordinator of the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Program between the period covering the program's inception in 2004 until February 2011. He is currently responsible for developing academic and institutional relations with the universities in India and South-East Asian countries.   He has been instrumental in helping to open up a range of opportunities to the EPFL students, such as, doing their "mobility" years at one of the IITs or, their final year major projects or internships at one of the Indian institutions/companies. Over a hundred EPFL students have benefited from these programs.   He was instrumental in establishing Internship program with the aim of promoting an awareness of EPFL among the IIT students. This program has become very popular among the IIT and IIITA students with several hundreds of them having benefited from this program.   He played a key role in the setting up of the EPFL-IIT Madras joint postgraduate course on "Technology and sustainable development" in 2000-01. He was the co-director of the last edition of the course which was held between January and April, 2008.