Fellow Ajoy Ghatak was Professor at IIT Delhi, currently NASI Meghnad Saha Distinguished Professor. He received MSc from Delhi University and PhD from Cornell University. He is the recipient of many awards including CSIR Bhatnagar award for outstanding contributions in physical sciences, SPIE Educator award for unparalleled global contributions to fiber optics research and his tireless dedication to optics education worldwide, Esther Hoffman Beller Medal for outstanding contributions to optics education; OSI Amita De award for life long research contributions in the field of optics and dedicated service to the optics community, and ICO Galileo award. Most recently, he received the 2020 Sang Soo Lee Award “for his seminal role in the development of fiber optics and guided wave photonics and for pioneering optics educations in India.”

Professor Ghatak nurtured the Fiber Optics Group at IIT Delhi and also master’s program there. He organized numerous workshops and short courses and was President of Optical Society of India. He has published extensively in the general area of optical waveguides and quantum well structures. The methods developed by him have been used by many researchers. He is author of many books including textbooks on OPTICS (translated to Chinese and Persian); Fiber Optics and Optical Electronics (both co-authored with Professor Thyagarajan).