Dr. Chelliah Thangaraj was the Director of the National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research (NITTR), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, from April 2017 to May 2022. NITTR is an institution under the Indian Ministry of Education. At present, Dr. Thangaraj is an Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology and Research (VFSTR) in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. Before joining NITTTR, Bhopal, he was the Vice Chancellor at Vignan University. He was also the founding Vice Chancellor of Anna University of Technology, Chennai, a state public university in Tamil Nadu. He has been a Commonwealth Academic Fellow at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; a DAAD Senior Fellow at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and a Visiting Scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He started his research career in water-power system planning using different techniques, such as, parallel processing, remote sensing, and GIS technologies. His current focus is on real-time system planning using big-data tools and machine learning algorithms. As the Director of NITTTR, Bhopal, he studied the impact of new teaching techniques to improve staff and student performance and the effect of government policy on engineering education in India.
Home Institution: Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology and Research (VFSTR) was established in 2008 and is the third oldest university in the state of Andhra Pradesh. In 2015, the institution received an A-grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, the highest body in India responsible for quality assurance of higher education institutions. The University received the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) recognition for five undergraduate engineering programs and was ranked in the top 100 for the university category by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Indian Ministry of Education. The University offers undergraduate, MA and PhD programs in engineering, science, humanities, business, and pharmacy. Since 2020, the university runs an Institute of Law offering bachelor’s degrees and an integrated law degree.