Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani Archives

Dr. Bharat Bhushan is an academy professor (San Jose, California), and has served as an Ohio Eminent Scholar and Howard D. Winbigler Professor, and as director of the Nanoprobe Laboratory for Bio/Nanotechnology and Biomimetics at Ohio State University, Ohio. From 2013 to 2014, he served as an ASME/AAAS science and technology policy fellow of the U.S. Congress. He holds a BS, two MS degrees, and a PhD in mechanical engineering, as well as an MBA and five honorary doctorates, a total of 10 college degrees. His research interests include fundamental studies in the interdisciplinary areas of bio/nanotribology/nanomechanics, nanomaterials characterization, scanning probe techniques, magnetic storage, bio/nanotechnology, nanomanufacturing, bioinspired liquid repellency, self-cleaning, anti-icing, anti-fouling, and water harvesting, science and technology policy.

Dr. Bhushan has authored 11 scientific books, over 100 handbook chapters, and over 900 scientific papers. He is one of the 1,248 highly cited researchers in all fields on Google Scholar, with an h-index of over 150 and with over 115,000 citations; Scopus’s one of 401 scientists for career-long citation impact across all fields out of over eight million scientists from around world; the fourth highly cited researcher in mechanical engineering; 149th most cited researcher in materials science; and an ISI highly cited researcher in materials science and in the cross-field category. He has made over 400 invited presentations, including over 300 keynote/plenary addresses at major international conferences across six continents. In 2019, he also delivered a TEDx lecture.

Dr. Bhushan is the recipient of numerous awards and international fellowships, and is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and the International Academy of Engineering (Russia). He has worked for various industrial research labs, including Mechanical Technology Inc., SKF, and the IBM Almaden Research Center. He is an alum of BITS, Pilani, and a recipient of the 2015 BITS (Pilani) Distinguished Alumnus Award. He can be contacted via: (bhushan100@outlook.com); (linkedin.com/in/dr-bharat-bhushan-48011871); and (facebook.com/bhushanb100).

Prof. David Ghertner received his BA from Colby College and MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University where he previously served as the director of the South Asian Studies Program. He is the author of Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi (Oxford University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Futureproof: Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life (Duke University Press, 2020) and Land Fictions: The Commodification of Land in City and Country (Cornell University Press, 2021). His research expertise lies in urban geography, and he has published widely on informal housing, property rights, urban aesthetics, and environmental governance. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

A series of digital property reform programs are currently spreading across rural India, utilizing drone mapping and digital technologies to map, title, and enclose landholdings. Digitized property rights are deemed essential to fighting poverty and fostering rural development, but also face technical and political challenges that vary by region and land tenure. The translation of customary rights, bordering of land, and construction of data infrastructure depend upon complex bureaucratic work. Through ethnographic research involving engineers and bureaucrats who are implementing the reforms in Goa and Delhi NCR and by interacting with residents impacted by these reforms, Prof. David Ghertner’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring how digital property is reconstituting landownership in India.