Theme: Reimagining the Future

We the students of Jadavpur University, Kolkata are back with the third edition of TEDxJadavpurUniversity on the 28th of March 2019. We are excited to listen to the thoughts, ideas and beliefs of the speakers we have called. We have tried to call speakers from different fields this year!

Gandhi Bhavan
Jadavpur University
Raja S C Mullick Road
Kolkata, West Bengal, 700032
India

Alokananda Roy

Dancer

The name Ms. Alokananda Roy, conjures an image of grace and elegance. Her versatility comes through in her innovative dancing styles and creative stage productions. Taking great pleasure, in being involved with varied creative activities, did never refrain her from extending genuine care and compassion to the society at large. Her journey begun as an uninhibited and ambition-less dancer, who sought pure joy in performing her art, without being confined to the profession of DANCE. Never edged herself towards competition nor did she seek popularity. Amidst all her work she remained conscious of her social responsibilities and always aspired to give every individual a fair chance in life. That made her initiate Inspiration Foundation, an initiative that trained under-privileged children in dance, music, recitations and art.

Anindya Mukherjee

Explorer and Writer

Anindya Mukherjee is an active mountaineer with a penchant for exploration. He has worked as a mountaineering expedition guide and a trek leader for the Indian Himalayas. In 2008, he became the first Asian to participate in the high altitude speed climbing competition on Mt Elbrus, Russia and finished 12th. He has to his credit the documentation of an unknown mountain range in China. Mukherjee’s tryst with Africa began when he was selected for the Everest Peace Project. He was the first Indian to have cycled across the African continent (2012) covering a distance of over 4500 km, across 5 countries from Nanyuki in Kenya to Walvis Bay in Namibia. In 2017, he became the first Indian to cycle across the massive Sahara desert. Articles on his explorations have been published in journals such as Alpinist, The American Alpine Journal, The Alpine Journal (U.K) and The Himalayan Journal.

Arijit Basu

Managing Director, State Bank of India

Arijit Basu is the Managing Director (MD) of State Bank of India and started his career with the bank in 1983 as a Probationary Officer. He is also a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. Shri Basu served SBI Life Insurance Company as its MD & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) from August 2014 to March 2018.During his tenure, the company successfully listed on the Stock Exchanges in October, 2017. Shri Basu held several key assignments in SBI which includes Chief General Manager of Delhi Circle and Regional Head & CEO of Japan Operations at Tokyo. He has worked in various verticals of the Bank including Corporate Banking, International Banking, Retail Banking and HR and was also part of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) initiative undertaken by the Bank. Shri Basu now is the Managing Director and is handling the areas of Commercial Clients Group and Information Technology.

Arpan Mukherjee

Photographer

Arpan Mukherjee, born 1977, trained in visual art, took photography as his medium of expression. His practice is process and research based, largely focused on socio-economic and political issues. He uses 19th century photomechanical process as medium of his work. He did extensive research on 19th century photography methods since 2001. As a co founder, Arpan has developed a practice based research studio of historical photography process in Santiniketan, named ‘Studio Goppo’. Arpan has participated in numbers of international and national exhibitions. He has conducted several workshops on Photography and printmaking globally. He has given lectures on history & contemporary practice of printmaking, photography. Presently he is teaching as associate professor in the department of printmaking, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan.

Ashoke Viswanathan

Film Maker

Ashoke Viswanathan, a Film & Television Institute of India (Pune) graduate, is a three-time National Award-winning filmmaker and an International Award winner. He has been the Chairman of the National Film Awards Jury twice, non-feature film section, as also a member of the governing Council of SRFTI (2014). He has the distinction of having five of the films directed by him included in the Indian panorama sections of the International Film Festival of India. He is, also, a film producer (with 5 feature films and several television serials to his credit) and a director of more than 150 film and television projects apart from the nine feature films.

Deepanjan Ghosh

Radio Jockey

Deepanjan Ghosh, popularly known as Mirchi Deep, is a Kolkata favourite! He has won various national awards for his radio jockeying and his own show on Radio Mirchi is very popular with us Calcuttans. His programme Bumper to Bumper and Kolkata Express have been two of the most well liked shows in the history of Bengali radio and the show Sunday Suspense on the station also attracted audience due to his amazing vocal prowess. Mirchi Deep also hosts the programme Club Mirchi now on every Saturday night at Mirchi 98.3 radio FM. Apart from this, he is also a history buff, a landscape and architecture photographer and a blogger. He's passionate about the heritage of Kolkata and he has been writing about it since 2013 on various platforms such Scroll and Live History India. Be present on 28th March, 2019 to hear him revisit the past and reimagine the future out of it!

Pinaki De

Illustrator

Pinaki De is a well-known and multiple award-winning graphic illustrator-designer who regularly works for leading publishing companies like Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Hachette, Westland Amazon, Oxford University Press, Rupa, Simon and Schuster, Bloomsbury, Routledge, Orient Blackswan, Singapore University Press (NUS), Primus, Amaryllis and many others. He has designed covers of over 400 books till date. In 2016, his cover design for the book "Kalkatta" by Kunal Basu won the best Cover Design of India award from Oxford Bookstore at Jaipur Literary Festival. That year the same work also won the best cover design of India award in PublishingNext 2017. His layout design work on Satyajit Ray’s archival manuscripts has drawn accolades from all across the globe. Pinaki is also a practitioner of sequential graphic narratives. Incidentally, his PhD. is also on comics theory.

Riddhi Sen

Actor

Riddhi Sen debuted in the film 'Open Tee Bioscope' and is the youngest actor in India to have won the National Film Award for Best Actor for his film Nagarkirtan. He was presented the award by the President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind. A regular actor for the theatre group Swapnasandhani, Riddhi was a student of South Point school, Kolkata and he has also been a part of blockbuster films such as Sujoy Ghosh’s ‘Kahaani’, Omung Kumar’s ‘Bhoomi’ and also Leena Yadav’s ‘Parched’. Catch him live at Gandhi Bhavan on the 28th of March as he reimagines the future of Bengali cinema, his expectations and experiences, his vision relating to the prospects of theatre in Bengal, the role of art in our culture and the power of the youth to collectively change the world.

Sudipta Sengupta

Geologist

Prof. Sudipta Sengupta is a distinguished name in the field of Geological Sciences. She worked as a Geologist in the Geological Survey of India between 1970 and 1973. In 1973, she received the prestigious scholarship of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 from U.K. and carried out post-doctoral research work for the next three years at the Imperial College, London. In 1977 she joined the Institute of Geology of Uppsala University, Sweden and carried out research in connection to the International Geodynamics Project. In 1983 she was selected as a scientist member of the Indian Expedition to Antarctica. She was one of the first two lady scientists in India to carry out researches in Antarctica, and in 1989, she visited Antarctica for the second time. She supervised a five years research project in the Schirmacher Hills of Antarctica, and her work is of fundamental importance as it became the basis of further research in the said area.

Tarun Souradeep

Spokesperson LIGO India

Prof. Tarun Souradeep is a Senior Scientist and a renowned researcher in the field of Cosmology and Gravitational Sciences, at Inter University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. He presently serves as the spokesperson and project coordinator of the prestigious LIGO-India mega-science project for the construction and operation of gravitational wave observatory on Indian soil. Tarun has led the sole Indian group within the international team of the Planck CMB space mission at the European Space Agency. His contribution to science has earned him international recognition. He has been elected a fellow of the International Society on General Relativity & Gravitation in 2013. He is a co-recipient of the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, 2016 and a two time recipient of the Gruber Cosmology prize. He has also been honoured with the Swarnajayanti fellowship, the NASI-Scopus award, the B.M. Birla Prize and the Vikram Sarabhai research award.

Utpal Chatterjee

Journalist

Among the most acclaimed of Indian journalists and public speakers, Mr. Utpal Chatterjee, who was until recently, the Honourable Sheriff of Calcutta and its first citizen, has interviewed 18 Heads of State, nine Nobel Laureates and travelled with Indian Prime Ministers as part of their respective media delegations. Having done his fellowship in Journalism from Oxford, he has travelled abroad on other official assignments more than 50 times across all the continents except Africa and Australia. He is on the panel of experts of BBC, London and the Editor, India, of LEADERS, the niche global journal headquartered in New York.