Dr. Nemkumar Banthia
Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada
Topic: Structural Health Monitoring
One of the most cited in the field of concrete materials and structures, Dr. Banthia has worked tirelessly to understand the performance of concrete structures under various conditions of loading and environment, developed numerous advanced ultra-high performance concrete materials with fiber reinforcement, devised innovative methods of laboratory and field testing and developed novel sensors for structural health monitoring.
Dr. Vidyadhar Limaye
President, SHM Canada Consulting Limited, Canada
Topic: Structural Health Monitoring – A Risk Management Tool for Infrastructure
Dr. Vidyadhar Limaye is the principal and lead structural engineer of SHM Canada. He has inspected, designed, and evaluated several marine structures and bridges and has over 47 years of engineering and project management experience in heavy civil engineering construction, marine and bridge structures, and structural health monitoring (SHM).
Dr. Shailesh R. Gandhi
Director, SVNIT, Surat
Topic: Deep Foundations and Instrumentation
Dr. Gandhi has been a faculty member at IIT Madras since 1982, in the Department of Ocean Engineering (1982-90) and in the Department of Civil Engineering (1990 onwards). He is presently the Director of Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat. Dr. Gandhi has been advising various Government and private organizations as a consultant for design and analysis of foundations and associated with the activities of the Indian Geotechnical Society.
Dr. A. Boominathan
Professor, Geotechnical Engineering, IIT, Chennai
Topic: Site characterisation for Nuclear Power Plants with advance testings
Dr. A. Boominathan is Professor of Geotechnical Engineering, at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai (India). He specializes in soil dynamics, geotechnical earthquake engineering, site characterization, microzonation, pile foundation analysis and seismic soil-structure interaction. He is an active consultant in the area of soil dynamics, machine foundation, seismic site characterization and site specific seismic studies for various projects including atomic power plants and refineries. He is a graduate of the Russian University of Moscow (1980) and received his Ph.D. in 1986 from Moscow Civil Engineering Institute of Russia.
Dr. Kumar Pitchumani
Regional Director- AECOM India Pvt. Ltd.
Topic: Monitoring of Tunnels and Surrounding Structures during tunnelling operations in urban areas
Dr. N Kumar Pitchumani has 27 years of experience in the field of Geotechnical Engineering. His experience includes teaching, research, consulting, analysis and design in various aspects of Geotechnical Engineering. His experience includes foundation designs for various types of structures in the transportation and marine infrastructure projects.
He has been responsible for various projects involving ground improvement of soft clays and reclamation fills. He is also involved in design of underground structures for metro projects. He is presently involved with Bangalore Metro, Mumbai Metro, Nagpur Metro and Chennai Metro.
Dr. Chandan Ghosh
Prof. Indian Institute of Technology, Jammu
Topic: Early warnings and Monitoring for Disaster Management in Infrastructures
Prof. Chandan Ghosh is an accomplished professional in the areas of Earthquake geotechnical engineering and has devoted more than 27 years of his career in UG, PG teaching, research guidance, development of teaching tools, training module for engineers, architects, town planners. Besides developing some of the IEC materials such as “Snake and ladder game” for earthquake, flood, road safety, cyclone, DM plan for family, he has participated in the India Govt. flagship programs since UN declaration at Yokohama-1994 to Sendai-2015, on the community based DM education and awareness campaign through social media and documentary films
Mr. Karun Raj Singh Sareen
Director, Major Project Advisory, KPMG India
Topic: Life cycle costs of PPP/BOT projects and efficacy of installing monitoring systems to optimize their maintenance costs by timely Interventions
Mr. Karun Raj Singh Sareen is a project Management professional with wide experience in Infrastructure Projects- Metro Rail, Railways, Roads, Transmission with organizations like BHEL, L&T Infra, L&T Metro Rail (Hydrabad) and KPMG. He is Alumnus of IIT Delhi and SP Jain Institute of Management Research.
Currently, He is Director, Major Project Advisory, KPMG India . He is Leading Project Controls function of a $3bn Metro Rail Project. has full Project Life Cycle experience (15+ yrs) of Mega Infrastructure Projects.
Mr. Ashish Gharpure
MD, GENSTRU Consultants Pvt. Ltd., Pune
Topic: Drone Survey for Slope Monitoring with Site Observations and Geotech & Geophysical Techniques.
An alumnus of IIT, Kanpur (Geotechnical Major) and ISB, Hyderabad is also a licensed professional Engineer in US, Mr. Ashish Gharpure has also worked in various technical and top management roles in different companies namely Trafalgar House Constructions, STUP Consultants, Maccaferri (India and USA), Z-Tech India, Inacces Geotech Solutions, and presently Genstru Consultants Pvt Ltd. Actively involved and contributed in providing innovative and state-of-the art solutions to many challenging and prestigious projects in Hilly terrain.
Mr. Shashank Vaidya
Director, Gem Engserv Pvt. Ltd.
Topic: A Perspective about NDT of Concrete and its limitations
Mr. Shashank Vaidya is an alumnus of IIT Madras, with President’s Gold Medal in M.Tech. (Structure). He has over 3 decades of experience in Bridge Engineering, Quality Management, Training, Concrete Technology and Managing large construction contracts and many arbitration cases as an arbitrator and technical expert.
He is a certified Lead Auditor of ISO 9001 and was conferred with Lifetime Achievement Award 2019 by the Indian Concrete Institute.
Mr. Aniruddha Shidhore
Director, PN Shidhore Civil Engineers (I) Pvt. Ltd. & Co , Mumbai
Topic: Drone Technology for Surveys and monitoring
Aniruddha Shidhore holds a Master’s Degree from North Carolina State University in Civil Engineering and a MBA from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Connecticut. He has worked extensively in the U.S. as well as in India and he has expertise is in the field of Geoinformatics and Transportation Engineering gained from 15+ years of professional experience.
Mr. Pranav Parikh
Founder, MNC 5D BIM Studio
Topic: 5D BIM practices in Indian context
Mr. Pranava Parikh has a degree in Computer Aided Engineering from USA and gave him the right platform to practice his passion. He has worked on large scale projects like stadiums, townships etc and he was responsible for the establishment of the first carasoul plant of India including the first construction robot of India.
In 2016, he took the leap into entrepreneurship journey, and has been providing consultancy service in BIM, Precast and Implementation of New Construction Technologies.
Dr. Sarah De Carufel
Manager, Engineering Solutions, Giatec Scientific Inc.
Topic: Non destructive Assessment of Reinforce Concrete Structure
As the Manager of Engineering Solutions for Giatec Scientific, Sarah De Carufel utilizes
her civil-engineering background to assist in the development of innovative products. Her
paper based on her thesis, Effect of High-Performance Steel Materials on the Blast Behaviour of Ultra-High Performance Concrete Columns, won the award for Best Paper at the 2016 First International Interactive Symposium on UHPC.