ASIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS

Professor Bishnu Pal was born on Dec 3rd 1948 in Shillong India and is currently Professor of Physics and Dean of Engineering at Mahindra University’s École Centrale School of Engineering (earlier known as Mahindra École Centrale or MEC in short) in Hyderabad India. Before joining MEC established in 2014 in collaboration with École Centrale Paris (now CentraleSuperlec) of France, he was a Professor of Physics for over 24 years (and as a Physics faculty member for about 34 years) at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, where he served as the Chairperson of the Physics Department (September 2008-December 2011) and also of the Computer Services Center (September 2002-August 2005). He was deeply involved in introducing and developing the highly sought-after interdisciplinary M. Tech. program on Optoelectronics and Optical Communication in 1980 at IIT Delhi. Two of his research papers – one (co-authored with Arun Kumar and Ajoy Ghatak) published in 1980 in Electronics Letters on effect of an axial refractive index dip in a single-mode fiber on the estimation of zero dispersion wavelength in it and another (co-authored with A. Barh, G P Agrawal, B M A Rahman, and R K Varshney) on the generation of THz in a specialty optical fiber in published in 2015 in Optics Letters were reprinted in the IEE book Progress in Optical Communication Vol. II ed by P J B Clarricoats (1983), and in the e-book Newest Updates in Physical Science Research Vol 4 ed by Jelena Purenovic, B P International London (2021), respectively. Furthermore, two of his authored/co-authored chapters from his edited book Guided Wave Optical Components and Devices - Basics, Technology and Applications (Academic Press, 2006) were reprinted in the book The Optical Communications reference (eds DeCusatis and Kaminow, Elsevier, 2010). He has edited 4 books published by Elsevier/Academic Press, John Wiley/New Age Publishers, Intech, and Viva publishers. Open access e-book Frontiers in Guided Wave Optics and Optoelectronics (2010) edited by him and published by Intech London has been downloaded over 140,000 times to date. He has also contributed over 15 chapters – all by invitation in various books.  Prof Pal has extensively contributed to sponsored research and industrial consultancy and especially several international collaborative research projects that involved UK, USA, Russia, France, Malaysia and Hong Kong. His recent areas of research have been microstructured specialty fibers for mid-IR and THz photonics, silicon photonics, and meta materials. His research career broadly covered design of application-specific specialty optical fibers like dispersion tailored fibers with low sensitivity to nonlinear optical effects, fibers for inherently gain flattened fiber amplifiers, large mode area fibers and fibers for DWDM transmission, all-fiber components and devices with focus on design, technology, and characterization including side-polished fiber half-coupler-based gain flattening filters for optical fiber amplifiers, fused fiber couplers, and wavelength interleavers as branching components for optical communication networks, designs of 1D-microstructured optical fibers like Bragg fibers for supercontinuum light, optical fiber sensors, guided wave components and sensors based on silicon photonics, and Anderson type localization of light in disordered optical waveguide lattices.
    Prof Pal has received several awards and honors in course of his professional and student career.  Some of these were National Science Talent Search scholar (NCERT, India 1965-1975), elected Fellow of OSA the Optical Society (USA), SPIE The International Society for Optics and Photonics (USA), Distinguished Fellow of OSI (India) and Fellow of IETE (India), Distinguished Honorary Foreign Member of Royal Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS, Norway) in 2007, Senior Member of IEEE (USA), Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Photonics Society (2005-2006), Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (1982-83, Germany), Fulbright Scholar at NIST Boulder CO (1991, USA), Royal Norwegian CSIR (NTNF, Oslo) International PDF (1975-77) and Visiting Professor (May-July 1988) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim Norway, 2016 Esther Hoffman Beller Medal of OSA The Optical Society (Centenary Year of OSA, USA), 2021 SPIE Maria J. Yzuel Educator Award, Invited faculty at the ICO Winter School in Optics held at ICTP Trieste (Italy) in 1998, 2017 Prof Selvarajan award for outstanding contributions to Photonics education and research by IEEE Photonics Society India chapter on 1st International Day of Light, 2006 Homi Bhabha award in Applied Physics of UGC (India), 2013 Om Prakash Bhasin award in Electronics and Information Technology (India), 2014 Khosla Research Award of IIT Roorkee (India) for lifetime contributions in research, 2010 Prof Y T Thathachari award for excellence in Physical Sciences (India) of Bhramara Trust (Mysore), CEOT award of IETE (India, 2010) for contributions to Optoelectronics Devices, Co-recipient of the first Fiber Optics Person of the Year award (1997) established by Lucent Technology India Branch and Voice & Data magazine (India), and the highest 2010 Optics award of Optical Society of India for lifetime achievements. He was President of OSI (India, 2012-2015), Member of the Board of Directors of OSA The Optical Society (Washington, USA, 2009-2011), founding Editorial Advisory Board member of Int. J. Optoelectron. (Taylor & Francis) and is currently a Member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of the journals: IEEE Photonics J (as Associate Editor), J. Opt. Comm. (Germany), J. Elect. Engg. & Tech. (Korea), Optoelectron. Letts. (Springer), J. Korean Opt. Soc. (Korea), Photonic Sensors (Springer), Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications (Taylor & Francis) and Kiran of the Indian Laser Society. 
    Prof  Pal has worked as a guest scientist at ELAB at the then NTH Trondheim (now Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in Norway, CNRS laboratory LPMC at University of Nice in France as Senior Foreign Scientist of CNRS for various periods, NIST Boulder Colorado in USA as a Fulbright Scholar, Heriot Watt University Edinburgh in UK as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar in Photonics, City U Hong Kong and University of Malay at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia as Visiting Professor for various periods, and at Fraunhofer Institute fur Physikalische Messtechnik in Germany as an AvH Fellow. He has been on the Steering Committee/Technical Program Committee of several global flagship conferences/workshops like OFC (USA), Photonics West (SPIE USA), biennial Fiber Optics and Optical Communication conference held in India, Specialty optical fiber workshop and Optical Fiber Sensor conference series, etc. and served as a member of the Jury for the Galileo Galilei Award of ICO and Sang Soo Lee Award of OSA-OSK Selection Committees. He edited a  special issue of Asian J Phys dedicated to Prof A Ghatak and  recently co-edited  a special issue of AJP with Prof R S Sirohi dedicated to Padma Shree Prof M S Sodha. These special issues of AJP were very well received by the scientific community.