Ms. Sari Sasaki is a communication designer, author and researcher specialized in cultural heritage preservation. She is currently Foreign Associate – Fellow, Conservation Division, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi. Since 2009, she has produced creative workshops, exhibitions, publications and cultural projects in partnership with international organisations, government agencies and NGOs in Asia. She is the editor of the UNESCO publication ‘Building Resilience: disaster risk management for documentary heritage and digital archives’.
Prof. Milind Sudhakar Marathe, a teacher of technology at his core, served as a Professor in the Department of Electronics Engineering at K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering, Mumbai. As an educationist, he has a keen interest in Power Electronics, Solar Photovoltaic and Electric Vehicles as dynamic areas of Engineering and is deeply interested in Education policies. He has published many academic books and research papers in esteemed journals and has been a speaker at various international conferences. He has given his contribution in various committees related to NEP 2020 with NCERT and served as an education administrator in various capacities.
Prof. Marathe maintains a strong network with universities, colleges, schools, and libraries to enthusiastically promote reading culture through books and digital content as is the habit of acquiring knowledge by young generation these days. In the Amrit Kaal, he foresees books and the habit of reading assuming a more substantial role in nation-building.
Dr. Vivek Patkar is associated with DELNET for more than three decades and has served on its Research Committee too. He has regularly contributed papers to the NACLIN since 2006.
He holds B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Mathematics and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Operational Research, all from the University of Delhi, Delhi. He was Professor of Quantitative Methods and Operations Management at the ICFAI Business School, Mumbai. Prior to that, he worked for 25 years as an Operations Research Specialist in the Planning Division of Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). There he was involved in land-use planning, infrastructure financing, and area & transport development schemes. In addition, he guided establishment of a comprehensive Regional Information System employing geo-referencing tools of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) for urban planning and management in MMRDA.
He is now an Independent Researcher and engaged in research on different themes apart from guiding research scholars across numerous disciplines. He has conducted several workshops on research methodology for both the natural and social sciences. Dr. Patkar is frequently invited as a resource person to the courses and seminars organised by the ICSSR, UGC Academic Staff College and Departments of Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Library and Information Science, Civics and Politics, Geography, and Education of the University of Mumbai and its affiliated colleges and many academic and research institutions in the country.
There are 16 books on his name including two on the Research Methodology and one on Research-based Project Development. To his credit are over 400 research papers and articles in reputed international technical journals, professional magazines and newspapers besides a variety of other publications. His works are in diverse fields namely, mathematical programming, operational research, urban planning and development, GIS & computer applications, transport, telecommunications, library and information science, science & mathematics popularisation and social issues.
Dr. Patkar is a Member of the Editorial Board of the international journals entitled, Human Systems Management and the Journal of Public Affairs and Change. He was a Member of the Monitoring/Steering Committee for Education and Content Development of the Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology Commission. He was a Vice President of Marathi Vidnyan Parishad during 2015-2022 and is currently a Member of its Standing Committee, serves on the Editorial Board of its monthly Patrika magazine and contributes to its several science and mathematics propagation activities.
He has so far voluntarily translated 115 booklets and other publications on cancer from English to Marathi and Hindi for an NGO named Jeet Association for Support to Cancer Patients (JASCAP: www.jascap.org). He is connected with a large number of academic, research and professional institutions in India and abroad.
Dr. Shubhada Nagarkar, is a Fulbright scholar, Professor & Head of Department of Library and Information Science, University of Pune,. At Centre for Publication Ethics (CPE), she has been instrumental in creating and maintaining the Research Portal of Savitribai Phule Pune University. Since 2018, she is a member of the Empower Committee of UGC-CARE and coordinating the “UGC-Cell for Journal Analysis” established by UGC in January 2019. She is a recipient of travel grants from the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, OCLC, USA, and GBIF, Copenhagen. Her areas of research are Bibliometrics, Publication ethics, Institutional repositories and digital libraries. Her work has been published by Current Science, Annals of Library and Information Studies, Library Review, Library Management and forthcoming in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing. She has been publishing popularizing articles on Library and Information Science and publication ethics in newspapers and on blogs. Recently her help is acknowledged by the Centre for Journalology, Ottawa hospital, which has recently launched the “one-stop shop for predatory journals”. She is also a Yoga teacher.
Dr. P. R. Goswami is a renowned Indian library and archives management expert. He has a long experience of serving the LIS profession for more than forty years. He is well versed in various administrative rules and procedures that are prevalent in the Government Libraries in India. He has held senior positions in several government departments and autonomous bodies which includes Planning Commission (now NITI Aayog), Government of India as Chief Librarian Cum Documentation Officer; Indian Council of Social Science Research as Director, Documentation in the National Social Science Documentation Centre (NASSDOC), New Delhi; Ministry of Culture, Government Of India as Director (Libraries) and Director (Central Secretariat Library), Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi; Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts as Director( Library and Information), New Delhi. Dr Goswami’s academic interest and research area include social science literature, sources of government information, statistical data sources , social science librarianship and related areas. Dr Goswami was awarded the membership of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) in the year 2000 on the basis of an international paper contest. He was a member of Social Science Section of IFLA and Special Libraries Association (SLA), USA. He was General Secretary, Indian Library Association during the period 2000 to 2002. He has visited USA, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, Poland, South Korea to attend meetings and academic events. The Lifetime Achievement Award was conferred on Dr P. R. Goswami by the Delhi Library Association in the year 2018. Indian Association of Special Libraries and Information Centres (IASLIC) Kolkata also honoured him with Dr A. K. Mukherjee Lifetime Achievement Award for Retired Librarian for the year 2017. He is a member of Technical Advisory Committee for Library and Documentation Services, Indian StatisticaI Institute (ISI), Kolkata and Book Selection Committee of CSL. Dr Goswami is a distinguished member of the Governing Board and Honorary Treasurer of the DELNET. Dr Goswami has published three books namely a) Statistical Information System and Libraries. New Delhi : Anmol Publications,1996. b) Corridor of Books: Memories, Ideas and Reflections of a Library Worker. New Delhi : Ane Books, 2019 (c) Evolution of Gazette of India: Paperwork, Bureaucracy and Government Document. New Delhi : Synergy Books, 2022. He has published a large number of scholarly articles in various national and international journals.
Dr. (Prof. ) Amitav Banerjee MBBS, MD, Post Doc Epidemiology
Served in the Indian Armed Forces from 1978 to 2005; from 2005 to 2024 Professor/Head, Department of Community Medicine, Dr DY Patil Medical College; from 2024 to date: Professor Emeritus and Editor in Chief Medical Journal of Dr DY Patil Vidyapeeth (Indexed in DOAJ & SCOPUS)
Awards:- Featured among top 2% in Elsevier/Stanford University global list of scientists in 2023, 2024 & 2025.Publons award for being among the top 1% peer reviewers globally in the year 2017 and 2018.Chief of Army Staff Gold Medal for paper on impact of Information highway on Armed Forces in 1995 DGAFMS and Col Commandant Award for paper on Tribal Malaria in 2002. MJAFI Best Paper Award for Investigation of Hepatitis E – 2005
Other Appointments Held:- Reader, Department of Community Medicine, AFMC 2000-2004, Professor & Head, Community Medicine, Dr DY Patil Medical College
Research Projects & Publications:- 250 [citations 4773; H index 28; i-10 index 54]
Dr Vrushali S. Dandawate is Librarian, AISSMS College of Engineering, Pune and is also the DOAJ Ambassador India. She has more than two decades of vast experience in the field of LIS. She has immensely been contributing for promoting the open access movement in India, evaluating open access journals applications from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. She is the Advisory Committee Member, Directory of Open Access Repositories and selected for Open Access Journals Toolkit Project Focus Group by OASPA and DOAJ. She has received numerous awards and recognitions including Best Librarian Award, Excellence in Academy Library Award, etc. She has to her credit more than 25 research papers and has delivered many invited talks in India and abroad. Dr Dandawante has also been instrumental in organising a large number of Workshops and Webinar sessions on Open Repositories, Open Access, DOAJ, Drupal, etc. Her other areas of specialisation includes handling software including Greenstone, Calibre, Moodle Learning system, etc.
Dr. Usha Mujoo Munshi is a Former President, Information and Communication Society of India, and a distinguished Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Munshi has been a pioneering voice in the digital transformation of knowledge. Currently associated with the India International Centre, she has led landmark initiatives in digital libraries, open access, and e-research long before they became global movements. Recipient of several national and international honours — including the rare Directeur d’Études Associé distinction from FMSH, France. She has authored numerous books, the latest one on “Data Science Landscape: Towards Research Standards and Protocols” published by Springer, and over 165 research publications. Widely travelled and deeply engaged with the world of ideas, Dr. Munshi continues to weave together the realms of science, culture, and creativity through her lectures, writings, and intellectual pursuits. Her acclaimed poems are included in several anthologies including Sahitya Academy, University of Pittsburgh journal.
Dr. Padmaja Joshi is currently working as Scientist-G and Head (Product, services and Outreach) at C-DAC Corporate and Head SENG division at C-DAC, Mumbai. She has total work experience of 33 years including her Ph.D. work. She has completed her Ph.D. in “Coupling and Cohesion Analysis of Object Oriented Programs for Refactoring” under the guidance of Prof. Rushikesh Joshi from IIT Bombay in June 2010.
She has contributed to various standard development at national level including LITD 25 for e-Governance, Enterprise Architecture for e-Governance (IndEA), Startegy and planning committee for Blockchain Technology, Data Anonymization subcommittee of e-Governance standards, and at international level IEEE subcommittee for “Digital Identity” standards.
She is currently involved in and heads many national level projects which are of the nature of research & development and implementation & service such as e-Pramaan: MeriPehchaan An authentication framework & Single Sign On (SSO), Aadhaar Data Vault as a Service, Unified Blockchain Framework, Knowledge and Resource Centre for Accessibility in ICT (KAI) 2.0 to name a few. She has successfully delivered many national level projects funded by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) such as GOV.IN Appstore, State level e-governance Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG), e-Sangam, and many more. She has also led projects with other government clients.
Dr Padmaja Joshi is also associated with academics and is a member of various board of studies and Annual progress monitoring of PhD Students. She also is guide of PhD and PostDoc students. Two students have completed their PhD and one student has completed postdoc under her guidance. She is also member of various societies and is a known speaker and reviewer.
Her areas of interest include blockchain technology, e-authentication, digital governance, software engineering, accessibility, data privacy and cyber security.
Dr. Nabi Hasan, with over 30 years of professional experience, is the Head Librarian at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, a top-ranked Govt of India institution. Earlier, he served as the University Librarian at Aligarh Muslim University, one of the largest library systems in India. He is the First Norman E. Borlaug Fellow from India in Library Information Systems, trained at Cornell University, New York, USA. Dr. Hasan has been honoured with the Fellow of the Special Libraries Association Award 2022 (FSLA). He won the SLA Engineering Librarian of the Year Award 2021, the Bonnie Hilditch International Librarian Award 2018, the SLP-SLA Asian Fellow Award 2019, and the SLA Presidential Citation 2021. Dr. Hasan has been conferred with the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Librarians’ Choice Award 2019 and is the recipient of the Vice-Chancellor Appreciation Award 2003 HP Agriculture University Palampur, Appreciation from the Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Delhi 2012, Appreciation from the Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University 2018, Appreciation Certificate from IEEE twice, Lifetime Achievement Award 2015, and SALIS-Dr. Harish Chandra-Sushila Chandra National Best Librarian Award 2022. Dr. Hasan has been awarded with the Outstanding Academic Librarian Award 2023, conferred on National Librarians Day 2023 and the 2023 Elsevier Library Stellar Club Membership for completing its certification programs. He received the SLA Asia Librarian Excellence Award 2024 at the University of Rhode Island, USA and was honoured with one of the most prestigious Rose L. Vormelker Awards 2024 from SLA USA. Earlier, Dr Hasan served as President of SLA Asia, the Academic & Education Community, and the Engineering Community of the SLA-USA. He has also served as the Vice-President of the Indian Association of Special Libraries and Information Centres (IASLIC), Executive Member of the Indian Library Association (ILA), Secretary of the Delhi Library Association (DLA) and Founder Joint Secretary of the Asian Library Association. He has served as the Co-Chair of the 2024 and 2025 SLA Annual Conferences held at the University of Rhode Island, and the University and the Organizing Chair of the NDLI-UNESCO International Symposium on Knowledge Engineering for Digital Library Design 2019 (KEDL 2019). Dr. Hasan headed the National Resource Centre in Library and Information Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Govt. of India, under its ARPIT MOOCs Program 2019-21 and successfully delivered the most popular 16 weeks MOOCs course on Emerging Trends & Technologies in Library & Information Services. He runs a 12-week Ministry of Education NPTEL MOOCs program on Science Communication with an IITD colleague. Along with University College London and SKS Germany, he created a self-paced free online certificate course on Open Science, which is a popular course. He is running or was associated with about 30 national and international projects, including those funded by the US Department of State, the World Bank and the European Union. He is currently the Secretary, IFLA Science & Technology Libraries Section (2025-27), 2025 President-Elect, Leadership and Management Division (LMD), Special Libraries Association USA, General Secretary of the Information and Communication Society of India (ICSI), and Chairman, ILA Sectional Committee, Engineering & Technology Libraries. Widely travelled, he has visited several countries multiple times, including: Japan, USA, UK, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Austria, Turkiye, UAE, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Mauritius, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Kazakhstan and Nepal. He has over 200 publications to his credit.
Dr. Neeta Verma is the Chief Advisor (Information Technology) to Election Commission of India. At Election Commission she led the IT initiatives of ECI for management of Elections and was part of the core team associated with conduct of Lok Sabha Elections 2024, one of the largest Elections in the World. Dr Neeta Verma is also the former Director General of National Informatics Centre (2016-2022), a premier Technology organization of Indian Government. With a career spanning over three & a half decades, she has been spearheading the Digital Transformation initiatives through development of Digital Platforms for Government in different sectors of development. She has worked closely with the Indian Judiciary, Government Ministries & State Governments during their Digital Transformation journey. With the mobile revolution in the country, she had also led the Mobile-First Strategy by focusing on delivering government services through mobile phones in ICT solutions built by NIC Under her leadership, NIC established National Data Centers at various locations & to provide state-of-art on-demand ICT infrastructure for Government Websites, web Portals, e-governance applications etc. Dr Verma had led the team in setting up first national Cloud ‘MeghRaj’ for the government in 2014. To leverage emerging technologies in governance, she led the establishment of one of its kinds CoEs (Centres of Excellence) in Blockchain, Application Security, Artificial Intelligence, Micro Services & Data Analytics, which are working towards exploring applications of emerging technologies in governance for agility in governance and delivery of services to citizens
During the COVID-19 crisis, apart from ensuring a seamless provision of Network, Cloud to Messaging & VC Services, Dr Verma was also entrusted by the Government to manage a mobile application, ‘AarogyaSetu’, by far the most downloaded government application in India (170 million downloads). Under her leadership, NIC developed several new mobile applications to cater to the specific needs of different departments in Centre as well as State Governments. Dr Verma has also guided NIC teams in productization of their popular solutions and has helped NIC establish its own World class Software products such as eOffice, eHospital, eProcurement, eAuction and eInvoice, e-Abgari, and many more.
With her vision to transform government services, initiatives and schemes through the application of technology, Dr Verma has helped National Informatics Centre emerge as a trusted partner to the Central government as well as the States Government in India. She had overseen the 800+ offices of NIC which are established right from the Central headquarters at Delhi to State Offices and District Offices in India.
Dr Neeta Verma holds a Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi & an Executive Certificate on Digital Transformation from the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research interests include applications of emerging technologies in Governance, Cyber Security, Data Centers, etc.
She has published 33 research papers in national & international journals & proceedings. Apart from publishing her research in national & international journals, she has also co-authored/ edited books on the role of technology. She has also authored/co-authored a number of guidelines, white paper, blue print on use of technology in different sectors of development, She is regularly invited at national & international conferences to provide thought leadership.
In 2019, she was featured amongst top 55 inspiring women around the world showcasing the prowess of technology in Government. She was also Felicitated with Top 10 Women Technology Leaders India Award in 2021 by REVA Academy for Corporate Excellence.
Major Vineet Kumar is a globally recognized leader in cyber diplomacy and Cyber peacebuilding, who has redefined cybersecurity as a force for social good. As Founder and Global President of CyberPeace, he has spent nearly three decades building one of the world’s largest citizen-driven movements for online safety, inclusion, and resilience — impacting over 200 million people across 112 countries.
An alumnus of Cranfield University and the University of Cambridge, Vineet is also a Chevening Fellow (UK Government), an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), and part of the British Council Future Leaders 2017 Programme. Major Vineet leads global collaborations with the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth Secretariat, ITU, Google, Meta, Amazon, and others, shaping global norms on AI safety, Cybersecurity, and digital trust. He has trained diplomats from 100+ countries, authored multiple acclaimed books, published several IEEE papers, and holds multiple patents in cybersecurity and AI Safety.
Recipient of 13 international and 25 national awards, including the recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2025, Times of India Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2025, and Government of India’s highest youth honour, the National Youth Award (Government of India), Major Vineet embodies the mission of using technology to empower people, strengthen peace, and build a trusted digital future for humanity.
He has been a distinguished speaker at leading global forums such as the UN Security Council CTC, UN IGF, ITU WSIS, Global Cybersecurity Forum, UN Cybercrime Convention, St Petersberg International Economic Forum(SPIEEF) 2025, Valdai Club Annual Forum to name a few.
Mr. Kanwaljeet Singh Arora is a seasoned technology expert with over 25 years of expertise in global delivery and digital transformation, with remarkable experience of having worked with industry leaders such as TCS, Fidelity and Capgemini. He is experienced in leveraging Generative AI, LLM, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) & ML technologies for enterprise use cases. He is pursing research & implementation of LLM Evaluation algorithms, LLM Fine-Tuning and Ethical AI practices. He has significant experience in conducting digital & AI assessments, strategy, costing, pre-sales, solutioning and program management. Additionally, he is managing delivery of advanced training programs in Gen AI, LLM, RAG, ML & Blockchain for corporates and higher education institutions. Mr Arora is AI & Blockchain Consultant and Trainer.