Chandrashekhar Joshi, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has been named the first holder of the Mukund Padmanabhan Term Chair in Excellence. The three-year term chair is one of two established in 2024, each supported with a $500,000 donation from Mukund Padmanabhan, an accomplished UCLA alumnus. The Samueli Foundation has matched these contributions with an additional $1,000,000. The second Mukund Padmanabhan Term Chair in Innovation is yet to be filled. Over the years, Padmanabhan has endowed multiple faculty chairs, scholarships, graduate fellowships, and research initiatives at UCLA Samueli.
Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of Engineering, praised Padmanabhan’s generosity and highlighted Joshi’s pivotal role as the inaugural chairholder. “Chan Joshi will continue to drive breakthroughs in plasma particle accelerators and compact light sources, making these instruments smaller, more accessible, and more affordable,” she said.
Padmanabhan earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from UCLA Samueli before joining IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, focusing on speech processing technologies and algorithm development for speech recognition. Now a partner and statistical researcher at Renaissance Technologies, Padmanabhan has over 20 U.S. patents and has received numerous accolades, including UCLA Samueli’s Professional Achievement Award and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He is also founder and president of the Guru Krupa Foundation, supporting education for financially disadvantaged students in the U.S. and India.
Joshi is internationally recognized for his creativity in experimental plasma physics. Over a four-decade career, he has pioneered plasma-based accelerators—technologies that use ionized gas to rapidly accelerate particles, creating high-energy beams in compact spaces. These accelerators are among the most important scientific tools of the 20th century and continue to address critical research challenges.
Building on his 1980s breakthroughs, Joshi has mentored generations of scientists and currently leads UCLA’s Plasma Accelerator Group, investigating future high-energy plasma applications. He has authored over 600 scientific papers and received numerous honors, including the Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award, IEEE Marie Curie Award, and the James Clerk Maxwell Prize. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2014 and became a foreign fellow of the Indian National Sciences Academy in 2025.
A committed educator, Joshi has advised 35 doctoral students, many of whom now lead research groups, and initiated programs like the Fast Track honors program in UCLA’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. His career reflects a lasting impact on both scientific discovery and engineering education.
