Course Instructors
Prof. Amit Goswami
University of Oregon, USA
Born in India; Ph.D. (1964) in Physics, University of Calcutta, India; Served as a Professor (since 1968) at the Institute of Theoretical Science in the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA and taught Physics for 37 years in this country, mostly at Oregon; Senior Resident Researcher (since 1998) at the Institute of Noetic Sciences;
author of many articles of diverse interests and four books including Quantum Mechanics, The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, Quantum Creativity: Waking Up to Our Creative Potential, and The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicist’s Guide to Enlightenment; started (1996) with Henry Swift the online newsletter Science Within Consciousness.
Varun Agarwal
Alumnus IIT Kanpur
Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata, India
Varun Agarwal (also known as His Holiness Bhaktisvarupa Vrajendra Kumar Swami) is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur (Aerospace Engg – 1999) and is currently the Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata. He was a recipient of IIT Kanpur Director’s Gold Medal in 1999 for his excellence undergraduate academic record. His research interests include the foundations of science and its possible connections with spirituality. His search for a deeper meaning of life culminated in meeting and taking personal guidance from Dr. T. D. Singh, which completely changed his life, after which he dedicated himself to the cause of selflessly helping humanity.
He is the Editor of many publications on science and spirituality, including Bhaktivedanta Institute’s reputed science-spirituality journal, Savijnanam – Scientific Exploration for a Spiritual Paradigm. His deep interest in the foundations of mathematics and the nature of consciousness and its relation to the nature of reality as well as ancient Indian texts has led him to interact and meet with renowned scholars at Harvard, Princeton, ETH, Stanford and MIT. He has delivered numerous talks worldwide on the foundations of science, as well as the foundations of life, mathematics and spirituality.
Prof. Bernard Haisch
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Bernard Haisch, Ph.D., is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications. He served as a scientific editor of the Astrophysical Journal for ten years, and was Principal Investigator on several NASA research projects. After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Haisch did postdoctoral research at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
His professional positions include Staff Scientist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory; Deputy Director of the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley; and Visiting Scientist at the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Extraterrestrische Physik in Garching, Germany. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Prior to his career in astrophysics, Haisch attended the Latin School of Indianapolis and the St. Meinrad Seminary as a student for the Catholic priesthood.
Vasudeva Rao
Alumnus IIT Kanpur
President of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata, India
Vasudeva Rao (also known as His Holiness Bhaktisvarupa Vrajapati Swami) is an alumnus of the prestigious IIT Kanpur (Computer Science, 1998), and is currently the President of the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He is one of the major contributors to Bhaktivedanta Institute’s publications, and also the Editor of Bhaktivedanta Institute’s reputed journal, Savijnanam – Scientific Exploration for a Spiritual Paradigm. He travels widely across India and abroad creating awareness regarding the interface of Science and Spirituality among academic and professional circles.
His deep interest in the foundations of mathematics, the fundamentals of computer science and logic, and its relation to the nature of consciousness, nature of reality as well as ancient Indian texts has led him to meet and interact with renowned scholars at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and MIT. He has delivered numerous talks on computer science and spirituality. Under his able guidance and supervision, more than 10 national conferences, 2 International conferences, and over 100 seminars and workshops on science and spirituality have been organized by the Institute in the past decade, which includes contributions from more than 20 Nobel Laureates and world-renowned scholars; in addition, over 200 papers have been published by the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He was a former Global Council Trustee of the United Religions Initiative.