Biographical note

Prof. T.G. Sitharam is currently the Director of Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India. He is a KSIIDC Chair Professor in the area of Energy and Mechanical Sciences and Senior Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (IISc). He was the founder Chairman of the Center for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transport and Urban Planning (CiSTUP) at IISc, and is presently the Chairman of the AICTE South Western Zonal Committee, Regional office at Bengaluru and President of the Indian Society for Earthquake Technology (ISET). Prof Sitharam is the founder President of the International Association for Coastal Reservoir Research (IACRR). He has been a  Visiting Professor at Yamaguchi University, Japan; University of Waterloo, Canada, University of Dolhousie, Canada,  and ISM Dhanbad, India, and was a Research Scientist at the Center for Earth Sciences and Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA.
Dr. P. Raghuveer Rao is a Principal Research Scientist, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and is involved in teaching, research and consultancy in the broad area of geotechnical engineering. He has taught courses on subsurface exploration and soil testing, earth retaining structures, behavior and testing of unsaturated soils, and fundamental of soil behavior for Master's and Doctoral students. His research interests are geotechnical instrumentation, slope stability analysis, numerical modelling, mechanics of unsaturated soils, contaminant transport through soil and reinforced earth structures. He has conducted several field and laboratory tests for design of foundations of different structures like buildings, turbo-generators and water tanks. He has 21 publications in journals and conference proceedings of national and international repute. 

Dr. Sreevalsa Kolathayar pursued M.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and served as International Research Staff at UPC BarcelonaTech Spain. He is presently Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Karnataka. Dr. Kolathayar has authored three books and over 65 research papers. His broad research areas are geotechnical earthquake engineering, geosynthetics & geonaturals, and water geotechnics. He is currently the Secretary of the Indian chapter of International Association for Coastal Reservoir Research (IACRR), and Executive Committee Member of Indian Society of Earthquake Technology. In 2017, The New Indian Express honored Dr. Kolathayar with 40 under 40 - South India's Most Inspiring Young Teachers Award. He is the recipient of ISET DK Paul Research Award from Indian Society of Earthquake Technology, IIT Roorkee. He received "IEI Young Engineers Award" by The Institution of Engineers (India), in recognition of his contributions in the field of civil engineering.