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Balaji Chakravarthy

Indian Institute of Technology Madras, College of Engineering, Guindy

ORCID iD 0000-0003-3010-8701
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About

Prof. C. Balaji is currently an Institute Chair Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, India. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of thermal sciences. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1995 in the area of Heat Transfer. He is currently the Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras.

He has more than 30 years of experience in teaching and research. His areas of interest include Fundamental heat transfer, Cooling technologies, Thermal optimization, Numerical weather prediction and use of machine learning for thermal engineering. Till date, Prof. C. Balaji has supervised 46 PhD theses more than 90 Masters theses. Prof. Balaji has made seminal and pioneering contributions to the field of heat transfer in the last three decades.

The early contributions of Prof. Balaji are in the demonstration of the scientific and engineering merit of the inclusion of surface radiation in natural and mixed convection problems, proof of the existence of radiation-induced convection boundary layers, and methods to handle surface radiation in heat transfer problems, for the first time, in an era preceding the availability of commercial/community software.

Prof. C. Balaji is a world leader in the area of phase change material-based composite heat sinks for thermal management, battery cooling, and energy storage. Prof. Balaji has pioneered use of multi-objective optimization strategies for these problems. He is the author or co-author of more than 230 International journal publications.

Prof. Balaji also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Thermal Sciences since 2016. He has appeared in the World’s Top 2 % Scientists published by Stanford University, continuously since 2021.

He is a recipient of the University Gold Medal (1990) Anna University, Chennai, Humboldt Fellowship of Germany (2005), the Young Faculty Recognition Award of IIT Madras (2007), the Prof.K.N.Seetharamu Award and Medal for excellence in Heat Transfer Research (2008), Swarnajayanthi Fellowship award of the Govt. of India (2008), the Tamil Nadu Scientist Award (2010), Marti Gurunath Award for excellence in teaching (2013) and Mid-Career Research Award at IIT Madras (2015). He is an elected fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

He has been consistently rated as an excellent teacher by generations of students at IIT Madras, India over the past three decades.

He is the author of 16 books that include seven text-books, three monographs, two motivational books on teaching and research and two books on teaching and research translated into Tamil.

Employment

  • Indian Institute of Technology Madras T.T.Narendran Institute Chair Professor
    1998 - Present

Education

  • Indian Institute of Technology Madras Ph.D.
    1992 - 1995
  • Indian Institute of Technology Madras Master of Technology
    1990 - 1992
  • College of Engineering, Guindy Bachelor of Engineering
    1986 - 1990

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications (195)