Dr. Guruprasad Rao
Director, Faculty of Design
Qualification: B.E. (Mech), P.G. in Tool Engineering, M.Des. in Product Design from IISc, Ph.D. from IIT Bombay
Achievements: 3 Gold Medallions from World Gold Council
Dr. Guruprasad Rao is Director of Faculty of Design, MIT-WPU, Pune Kothrud campus. He mentors two design schools namely School of Design & School of Visual Arts. His current focus is on shaping State of the art Design schools to create future design leaders in Product Design, UI/UX Design, Visual Communication, Fashion Design, Interior Design, Graphic Design, Instruction Design and Digital Media.
His research interest includes Product Design, Product Aesthetics, Product Semantics, Product Prototyping, Jewellery Design, Visual Semantics, Visual Grammar, Digital Manufacturing, Medical Prototyping, Experimental Aesthetics, Product Life Cycle Management and Industry 4.0
Dr. Rao is a technocrat with over 32 years of experience encompassing Industry & Academia. He holds BE (Mech) with PG in Tool Engineering from GTTC , M Des in Product Design from IISc, Bengaluru and PhD from IIT Bombay. For his terminal degree, he worked on Medical applications of 3D Printing. He is trained Bal Bhavan Educator and has taught Painting at Jawahar Bal Bhavan. He has undergone Training at OSAKA, Japan in Product Design under AOTS scholarship.
His industrial assignments include Titan, Tanishq, Crompton Greaves, Imaginarium and presently at MIT-WPU, Pune. He joined MIT -WPU as Director, Faculty of Design and overseas school of design and School of Visual Arts. He was Director & Mentor at Imaginarium India Pvt Ltd, a leading 3D printing company from Mumbai.
He has taught design at IISc, NIFT, JSSATE and NTTF. He was Professor & Head, Project Office IICD, Jaipur. He also teaches courses on Emerging technology and its impact at SPJIMR and KJ Somaiya Business Schools. He is also a mentor at KIIT-TBI, Bhubaneshwar and guides start-ups.
As an accomplished Product Designer, he holds 8 Patents and 150 Plus Design Registrations. He has received many awards for his Fine Arts and Product Design efforts including 3 Gold Medallions from World Gold Council.
Dr. Rao is associated with many industry bodies such as CII / FICCI / NASSCOM /BIS / IAMF / Atal Innovation Mission. Presently he is a part of Member, CII National Committee on Design (2019-2021). As CII Conference Chairman, he successfully led CII 3D Printing Conference 2019, Mumbai. Currently he is part of Vernacular Task Force of AIM to promote Design Thinking across the country. He has served as Jury in many Business, Design and Innovation Challenges for CII / ASME / AICTE / BIRAC and TBIs. Presently he is engaged as the Jury for Excellence in Industry 4.0 implementation for FICCI.
Dr. Rao is a passionate speaker and loves to talk about Design, Aesthetics, Innovation, Digitization of Manufacturing, Additive Manufacturing / 3D printing, Design for AM, Medical Device Innovation, Medical Applications of AM / 3D printing. He loves to share his experience through keynotes, invited Expert lectures, as FDP Faculty, as Guest Faculty, as Visiting Faculty, Corporate Keynote speaker, Expert Panellist in national and international conference and conclaves.