VADAKKEPAT, an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore is the founder secretary of the Federation of International Robot-soccer Association [www.fira.net] and currently its General Secretary. He is one of the resource persons in the Igniting Minds [www.ignitingminds.org] movement by Vijyana Bharathi India which is a programme enabling students to shed conventions and think out of the box.
He is the founding Editor-in-Chief for the Springer Journal of Frugal Innovation [www.jfrugal.com] which is as an open access Journal aimed at creating a platform for ideas and innovations for an inclusive growth. He has initiated an International Conference on Frugal Innovation [www.ifrugal.org] which is planned in Singapore in 2014. He runs the ‘Ideas for Life’ Social Entrepreneurship Challenge seeking design innovations which are simple and novel, and directs the Frugal Innovation effort of NUS. He was the general chair to the FIRA Robot World Cup and Congress Singapore 2005. He was the General Program Chair to the FIRA Robot World Congress Incheon 2009 and the General Chair to the FIRA Robot World Cup and Congress Bangalore 2010. He was the founder director to an entrepreneurial start-up “Robhatah Robotic Solutions” at Singapore and Bangalore.
DR. VADAKKEPAT is the Editor-In-Chief for the Springer Handbook of the Humanoid Robotics. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics. His Humanoid robots and robot soccer teams have consistently won several international prizes.: First prize and overall championship in Humanoid robot soccer at the FIRA Robot World Cup (Germany 2006, Singapore 2005 and Austria 2003), First Prize (open category) in Singapore Robotic Games (2004) and Second prize in FIRA 2004.
He is a member of the CII National Committee on Robotics, Confederation of Indian Industry since 2009. He is a Senior Member of IEEE (USA, since 2005). He was elected as the Secretary to the IEEE Singapore Section for the year 2005. He has served as Technical Activity Coordinator to the IEEE Region 10 (Asia-Pacific) in 2001-2002. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (IETE), India and FIRA. He is actively involved in various technical forums including conferences, symposia and robotic competitions. He has been featured in several prominent newspapers and TV shows in India, Singapore, USA, Korea, Japan, Spain, Kuwait, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain, France and China. His name is included in the 2006 Marquis Who is Who in the World.
Prof. Vadakkepat received his M.Tech and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in 1989 and 1996 respectively. While pursuing Post-Doctoral studies at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST, 96-98), he was awarded the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) fellowship. Since 1999, he is with the National Univ. of Singapore. His research interest include Frugal Innovation, Distributed robotic systems, Humanoid robotics, Biomorphs, Neuro-Fuzzy Controllers and Intelligent Control techniques and, has publications in several leading international journals.