Dr. Mrittunjoy Guha Majumdar, Chair – IHAR Science Committee, is an Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies Bengaluru and Assistant Professor at Amrita Vishwavidyapeetham, Delhi NCR. Having completed his doctorate from Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, he has been an institutional postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Indian Institute of Science – Bangalore (funded by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India) and a postdoctoral associate of Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1973) Prof. Brian Josephson at the University of Cambridge. He has been a Trinity Barlow Scholar (2015-2018), Nehru Scholar (2014-2018), INSPIRE Scholar (2011-2014) and TIFR NIUS Fellow (2012-2014). He was a lead speaker in the domain of quantum error correction at the National Quantum Mission (NQM) strategic consultation meeting in July 2023. His area of research expertise is in entanglement, quantum information and the foundations of quantum physics. He has had training in Artificial Intelligence from the MIT Schwarzmann School of Computing, with one of his recent research focus-areas being Quantum Machine Learning (QML). Dr. Guha Majumdar has previously worked with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Government of India), UNESCO and G20 on education and science policy. He has also been a science communicator, with his documentary on quantum mechanics aired on Doordarshan, under the Science India initiative. His book ‘From Shiva to Schrödinger’, published by the Penguin Randomhouse group, has been a bestseller. He is the national convenor of Mandala, that intends to bridge contemporary science and Indic thought, in a rigorous and self-consistent manner, at the ontological as well as the epistemological and normative levels.

Utkalika Sahoo is an Assistant professor at Bangabasi Evening College. Earlier, she has been teaching at Naihati RBC Women’s College since 2010.She did her Masters in History from Jadavpur University and MPhil in the Department of International Relations from Jadavpur University. Currently, she is doing her PhD in the Department of Modern History from Calcutta University. Her PhD topic is Partition Literature. She gives NET SET coaching at Kalyani University. She has written more than 30 articles and books. She also writes articles in foreign newspapers.