Dr. U. Chandrasekhar, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Veltech Dr. RR & Dr. SR University, is a scientist and academician with more than three decades of experience in research in engineering and project management. He received his graduation (NIT, Surathkal) and post-graduation degrees (IIT Chennai) in Mechanical Engineering. He received PhD from VTU for his research in additive manufacturing carried out at DRDO. His areas of research include mechanical analysis of aero gas turbine engine modules, additive manufacturing, micro aerial vehicles and sensors for harsh environments. He received a Gold Medal from the former President of India Dr. AP J Abdul Kalam for his academic achievements. He will deliver keynote address on "Additive Manufacturing for Design and Development of Aeronautical Systems".

Dr. Jayant Trewn is working as faculty in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Wayne State University, Michigan, USA. He is alumnus of NIT Trichy (NITT). He has graduated in Mechanical Engineering from NITT in 1978. He captained the hockey team in NITT from 1976- 1978. He holds a Doctorate degree in Industrial Engineering from the College of Engineering, Wayne State University, MI, USA. He is an Industrial Engineer specializing in Quality Systems design, development, implementation and management. He has accumulated over a decade of experience working in healthcare organizations such as Spectrum Health Medical Group, Beaumont Hospitals, and service organizations such as Thomson Reuters and Lason Systems. He also worked at Lason systems as Vice President Global process Engineering and at Thomson Reuters working as Director of Quality Assurance, IP and Science division, managing the quality of acquisition of data for scientific research. He has written three books, Kaizen Demystified, Practical Lean Sigma for Healthcare Kaizen Demystified and Multivariate Statistical Methods in Quality Engineering and he has been published in international journals. He will deliver a keynote address on "Decoding the DNA of the Health Care Delivery Process by utilizing a Systems Approach - Understanding the Man, Machine, Method, Material and Environment interactions in comparison to Manufacturing and Service Industries". In addition to the keynote, he may coordinate workshops in Healthcare FMEA, Healthcare QFD and Lean in Healthcare.

Dr. Suwas Nikumb is senior research officer, at the National Research Council of Canada in London, Ontario. He received his MSc and PhD in Laser Physics from the University of Pune, India in 1974 and 1980 respectively. He joined as Research Associate in the high power laser group, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Alberta in 1992. His research background includes multi-kilowatt laser materials processing, precision micromachining using short pulse, DPSS lasers and their applications to micro-miniature devices, sensors and products. He has led many projects on laser development, porous semiconductors, PBG materials, machine & process dynamics, micro-devices & sensor fabrication, laser joining and multi-kilowatt carbon di- oxide laser applications. His scientific contributions cover more than 240 publications as well as 12 US/Can patents. Since 1995 he is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering and the graduate research committee member at the University of Western Ontario. He has many institutional awards to his credit including the prestigious Federal Partners for Technology Transfer (FPTT), NRC’s Eminent Researcher and Outstanding Achievement awards. He serves on NSERC Strategic Projects Grants committee for manufacturing and Canadian Standards Association’s OHS standards committees. He is also member of the board of directors of Conestoga College of Ontario. He will deliver keynote address on "Ultrafast laser technologies for Micro Fabrication and Surface Functionalization".

Dr. Usha Ramanathan is a reader in Supply Chain Management in the Nottingham Trent University, UK. Earlier, she worked as a senior lecturer in universities in the UK, Oman and India. Her teaching experience spans for over 20 years. She is a Fellow of Higher Education Academy and a Chartered Member of Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. Her research interest includes supply chain collaboration for sustainability, role of collaboration in SMEs performance, collaborative planning forecasting and replenishment (CPFR), value of information sharing and forecasting, e-commerce, RFID, Big Data, retail customer behavior and loyalty in the contexts of service and operations. Some of her research work obtained high honours such as the "Highly Commended Award" at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012. She obtained funding for her research projects from the British Council, the British Academy, Newcastle Business School and the Nottingham City Council. She will deliver keynote address on "Green e-tailing: An extension of greenness to on-line sales".

Dr. R. Jagdheesh received his M.Sc. (1998) and Ph.D. (2005)from Bharathidasan University, India. After the Ph.D., he worked as postdoctoral fellow at Raja Ramanna centre for Advanced Technologies in India, ENSMA CNRS in France, University of Twente in Netherlands, and University of New south Wales, Australia before he joined the CLUPM, Polytechnical University of Madrid in Spain as COFUND Marie Curie Fellow. His research is focused on laser cladding, laser surface alloying and laser micromachining for surface functionalisation. He has published more than 38 research papers in journals and conference proceedings and three European patents. He will deliver keynote address on "Laser machined superhydrophobic surface".

Dr.K.Ganesh is Knowledge Expert and Global Lead of "supply chain management center of competence" at McKinsey & Company, Chennai, India. He has graduated in Production Engineering from Annamalai University with the university first rank. He pursued his Master's degree in Industrial Engineering at NIT, Trichy and secured college first. He then moved to IIT Madras where he obtained his doctoral degree in Supply Chain. He is having total 13 years of research and consulting experience in the supply chain consulting and worked with top consulting firms such as TCS and IBM. He has published more than 100 papers in leading international research and written six books. He is himself a lyricist and has written several poems in both English and Tamil. He will deliver keynote address on "Digital Manufacturing and Planning".

Dr. M. Mathirajan is working as a faculty member in the Department of Management Studies, IISc, Bengaluru since 1986. He received M.S. (Engineering) degree by research in Applied Operations Research and PhD degree in Operations Management from the Faculty of Engineering, IISc, Bengaluru. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Singapore MIT Alliance (SMA) of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the Vice President of Analytics Society of India, since inception. He is also a Secretary of Operational Research Society of India, Bengaluru Chapter. His PhD thesis was adjudged as best thesis for "M. N. Gopalan Award of 2002-Annual Convention of ORSI". His research interests are in the development of mathematical modelling and heuristic methods for the problems related to Industrial Engineering, Operations, Logistics and Supply Chain Management in Manufacturing, Service and Container Terminal Management areas. He has published over 165 research articles. He is a co-author of three books published by Person, PHI and Allied Publishers respectively. He will deliver keynote address on "Dynamic Real-Time Scheduling of Batch Processing Machines in Semiconductor Manufacturing".

Dr. S Soundarapandian is working as faculty member in mechanical engineering with IIT Madras (https://home.iitm.ac.in/sspandian/) since 2013 onwards. Before that, he was with University of North Texas as working as post-doctoral fellow in advanced materials and manufacturing. He has led industrial/sponsor projects in design, materials, manufacturing and automation. Presently, he is working in two key projects (DST-AMT and UAY) in advanced manufacturing and his research team is working on additive manufacturing, laser-aided surface engineering, robotics and automation. He will deliver a talk on "Key challenges and road ahead to 3D printing."

Mrs. Mathangi Ramachandran is currently a Vice President of Citibank and leading the Next Gen-APAC team. She has more than 13 years of proven track record in building world-class data sciences solutions and products. She has extensively worked on building chat bots and productizing text mining insights. She has 6 Patent grants and 20+ patents pending in the area of intuitive customer service, indoor positioning and user profiles. She is adept across machine learning, text mining NLP technologies & tools. She will deliver a keynote address on "Machine Learning".

Mr. Ramakrishnan Subramanian is a Head of Product Placement Planning in Integrated Margin Management Group, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited. He has graduated in Production Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli in the year 1987. After graduation, he had a brief stint as Project Associate in Ocean Engineering Centre, IIT Madras before joining HPCL in January 1989. He has completed further studies of Advanced Diploma in Management (ADM) and Diploma in Human Resource Management (DHRM). He underwent many training programs viz. Advance Management Program of ASCI, Hyderabad including study tour of Europe, Maximizing Leadership Potential by HBS, etc. He was certified as Lead Auditor for ISO 9001 & ISO 14001 in 2002. He handled various positions in Oil Installations covering Truck, Rail & Tank Farm Operations, Maintenance, Projects, Safety, Logistics, and management of supply Chain with four different modes of Pipeline. He rose to position of Head of Suryapet Terminal of HPCL in 2003. He worked as Head of Distribution from Aug 2014 till Mar 2015, and introduced many initiatives, viz., Optimization of Logistics Cost using Linear Programming Model, Product Sourcing & Inventory Management, Constraint identification & mitigation, Coordination with Other Oil Companies and Railways. He will deliver keynote address on "Concept of Integrated Margin management in a large Oil Refining and Marketing Organization".

Mr. Swaminathan Vaidyanathan holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering and PGDM in Operations Management. He has 25 years of experience at HAL, leading projects in Engineering and Materials Management space. Since 2009, he has been working as independent consultant to leading suppliers in the Aerospace and Defense sector with market entry strategy, go-to- market planning, sales and supply chain operations being his focus areas. He is also on the board of a few emerging startups in the aerospace & defense sector and contributes as an advisor to several professional bodies. He will deliver a keynote address on "Challenges in SCM for Aerospace & Defence Business in India"

Dr. Ashok G. Matani, is presently working as Associate Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, Government College of Engineering, Amravati, India. He received his MBA degree in Marketing. He holds a Doctorate degree in Mechanical Engineering. His area of interest includes energy conservation, industrial engineering, productivity, industrial management, operations management, entrepreneurship, water conservation and environment. He had delivered number of keynote addresses and worked as session chair in workshops / conferences in CSIR, UGC, AICTE, IITs, IIMs, NITs, TEQIP and other educational institutions from different parts of India. He will deliver a keynote address on "Green Design and Manufacturing"

Mr. S. V. Subrahmanian is providing HR, OD and Leadership consultancy to different organizations like Madras Management Association, Bharat Electronics Limited, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Power Management Institute of NTPC and educational institutions in India. He completed his M.A. degree in English Literature (1982) from Thiagarajar Arts College, Madurai and received his additional M.A. degree in Personnel Management & Industrial Relations (1987) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He began his HR career with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) in June 1987 and later headed the HR function of Companies like MAC Industries, Chennai, Silver line Technologies, Mumbai, Hutch Telecom, Ahmedabad, HFCL, Chandigarh, Quinnox Consultancy Services, Mumbai, Tamouh Investments LLC, Abu Dhabi (UAE). He has a comprehensive experience of 30 years, in all facets of HR function in large and reputed companies operating in Manufacturing, IT, Telecom and Services sectors in different parts of India and UAE. He has also taught in reputed Engineering Colleges and Management Institutes like Jamnalal Bajaj Management Institute, Sydneham Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Trichy, IIT Madras and NIT, Trichy in India. He is an Adjunct Faculty, for HR with Christ University, Bangalore and GITAM University, Bangalore. He will deliver keynote address on "Convergence of Technology and Its Impact on Productivity".