Dr. Padmanabha Vivek is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Impact Physics Department at Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut (EMI), Freiburg, Germany and Geology Department, University of Freiburg, Germany. He has also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Civil Engineering Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) after completing his PhD from the same Institute. His research interests include studying the shock response of geomaterials material, fracture and fragmentation of rocks and granular materials, energy geotechnics and impact geomechanics. He is a member of the International Shock Wave Institute (ISWI), International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM), International Geosynthetics Society, and the Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS). He holds 1 patent and has authored 11 research publications in reputed journals and conferences.
Prof. T. G. Sitharam is the Director, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (on deputation) and Professor of Civil engineering at IITG, Guwahati, Assam, India. Formerly, he was KSIIDC Chair Professor in the area of Energy and Mechanical Sciences and Senior Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (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. He is presently the 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, Halifax, Canada; and ISM Dhanbad, Jharkhand, and was a Research Scientist at the Center for Earth Sciences and Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA until 1994. He is a fellow of many societies and has received many awards to his credit. He has an h-index of 39 and I-10 index of 103 with 4540 citations.