Atul Chokshi

Atul Harish Chokshi (born 1958) is an Indian materials scientist, metallurgical engineer and a professor at the Department of Materials Engineering of the Indian Institute of Science. He is known for his studies on high temperature deformation and failure of ceramic materials and is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. the National Academy of Sciences, India, Indian Academy of Sciences, and Indian National Science Academy as well as the Indian National Academy of Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 2003.

Biography

Atul Chokshi, born on 24 March 1958, gained his bachelor's degree (BTech) in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1980 and went to the US for higher studies. Joining the University of Southern California, he earned a master's degree (MS) in 1981, and followed it up with a PhD in material science in 1984. He continued at the university for his post-doctoral work during 1984–1986 and did further researches at University of California, Davis from 1986 to 1988.

Legacy

Focusing his researches on the engineering mechanical properties of materials, Chokshi has worked on ceramic materials which has assisted in a wider understanding of how the material behaves in high temperature and the role of interfaces in the process. His work covered cavitation failure, superimposition of hydrostatic pressure and creep of materials such as alumina, ceramics, ceramic composites and magnesium alloys. He has documented his researches in over 135 articles and the online article repository of the Indian Academy of Sciences has listed 115 of them.

Chokshi was one of the scientists who reported the strengthening in nanometals and contributed to the establishment of a creep and tensile testing laboratory for examining superplasticity in ceramics at the University of California, San Diego. 2000 and 2003 editions of the International Conference on Superplasticity in Advanced Materials (ICSAM) and has also served as a visiting faculty at a number of universities in the US, Europe and Japan.

Awards and honors Chokshi received the Swarnajayanti Young Scientist Award from the President of India in 1998 The year 2001 brought him two honors, the Metallurgist of the Year Award of the Indian Institute of Metals as well as the elected fellowship of the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2003. In 2004, he received the Citation Laureate Award of Thomson Scientific and was elected as a fellow by the Indian National Academy of Engineering he became a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the next year. and his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras selected him for the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2008. has been listed among the 100 material scientists with the highest number of citations.

Selected bibliography