Course Instructors
Dr. Jaynarayan Tudu
IIT Tirupati, India
Dr. Jaynarayan Tudu is currently working as an Assistant Professor at IIT Tirupati in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He primarily contributes in the area of AI Hardware Design and Reliability. He has been working on the synthesis of science and spirituality in collaboration with the Bhaktivedanta Institute for quite some time. In this area, he contributes as a researcher, as an organiser of conferences, editor of publications, and as a speaker. He received an MS and a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2011 and 2016, respectively.
Sushant Sharma
Alumnus, IIT Guwahati, India
Sushant Sharma is a B. Tech. graduate (2000) from IIT Guwahati. He has contributed enormously towards various activities of the Bhaktivedanta Institute as an author and an editor. He was last associated with Tech Mahindra Limited as Tech Leader and has an IT experience of over 15 years. Later, Sushant Sharma decided to dedicate himself to the mission of Bhaktivedanta Institute and has been engaging himself to study the science of consciousness from a scientific as well as spiritual perspective. Under the able guidance of science-spirituality synthesis visionary Dr. T. D. Singh, he has delivered a key note lecture at the International Conference on Life and its Origin at Rome in 2004. From 2007, Sushant has been a speaker in many science-spirituality conferences and workshopsorganized by the Bhaktivedanta Institute including the AISSQ conference series. His conference lecture themes include “Man and Machine”, “Computer and Intelligence” and “Inimitable Intelligence”.
Prabhakar Ballapalle
Western Digital, India
Prabhakar Ballapalle is presently a Senior Technologist (a senior position in technical Leadership) at Sandisk, Bangalore. He is presently leading Firmware architecture and Innovation across INAND Division. His areas of research and development currently include flash controllers and enterprise storage systems etc. Before joining SANDISK, he worked in very prestigious companies like: SEAGATE, LSI, AGERE etc. He also worked as a scientist at Central Research Laboratory and contributed in many prestigious indigenous projects like, Development of Thermal Imager, Remote Surveillance System and Radar Video Transmission System, etc. He received his M.Tech in Digital Signal processing from IIT-Kanpur in 2000. He has more than 10 publications and 5 issues patents to his credit. His research areas include Storage, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, speech processing, audio processing, video processing etc.
He is very actively involved in promoting the discussions on science & spirituality among the student’s community and learned circles. He is currently serving as Director, Bhaktivedanta Institute, Bangalore. He is also an associate editor of “Savijnanam”, Bhaktivedanta Institute journal, “Tattva Jijnasa”, Bhaktivedanta Institute Magazine and the booklet “God, Intelligent design and Fine tuning”. His areas of interest in Science and Spirituality include Consciousness, Bio-feedback and Meditation, Effect of Prayers on Mind and Body, Japa Meditation, Personality Development etc.
Vasudeva Rao
Alumnus, IIT Kanpur, India
Vasudeva Rao (also known as His Holiness Bhaktisvarupa Vrajapati Swami), an alumnus of prestigious institute, IIT Kanpur (Computer Science, 1998), is currently the President of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata. He is also the Editor of Bhaktivedanta Institute’s reputed annual journal, Savijnanam – Scientific Exploration for a Spiritual Paradigm and travels widely across India and abroad. His deep interest in the Foundations of mathematics, fundamentals of computer science and Logic and its relation to nature of reality as well as ancient Indian texts led him to interact and meet renowned scholars at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT.
He has delivered numerous talks on computer science and spirituality. Under his guidance and supervision, more than 10 national conferences, 2 International conferences, over 200 papers and over 100 seminars and workshops on science and spirituality have been organized by the Institute in past decade which includes contributions from more than 20 Nobel Laureates and world-renowned scholars.