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Our Mentors and Speakers
Who We Are
Sukanya Sinha
Sukanya Sinha sees the world as an endless wonder, a world where children are excited and curious about learning science. She was the founder director of Curiouscity Science Education with the mission to enable children to look at science as a special way of viewing the world. Since 2004, she has been a visiting scientist at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore.
Sukanya also writes (in English and Bengali) to share her passion for science with her readers. She was awarded the prestigious Rabindra Smriti Puraskar in 2010 for science writing in Bengali.
She has M.Sc., M.Phil. degrees from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Maryland College Park.
Sukanya has facilitated numerous courses at the online and residential programs at GenWise and Gifted World, over the years, including those on Intelligent Estimation, and Scientific Enquiry.
Utpal Chattopadhyay
Utpal's passion in life is "to firmly establish science as a wonderful culture in developing young minds." Since 2010, Utpal has been teaching Advanced Physics to talented undergraduate students at the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore.
He was one of the founders of Curiouscity Science Education, where he conducted numerous science sessions with middle school children. Utpal has been also been facilitating courses on Physics and Mathematics to gifted school students for the past several years. Utpal has a bachelor's degree with honours in Physics from IIT Kharagpur (1st in his class), and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
His corporate/ professional work experience includes stints at Bell Labs and Motorola (where he was a Director). Post 2005, he cannot imagine life without a chalk and the blackboard!
Rupin Chheda
Rupin Chheda has a background in engineering, and is a tinkerer at heart. None of his childhood toys survived in one piece for more than 30 minutes! He was always curious to know what’s inside them. This curiosity led him to neatly unscrew all his toys and gadgets and explore what’s inside.
His life story has been about significant engineering failures, like building a 3D printer multiple times (and not succeeding even once), building software that no one ever used, or just generally fooling around with new things and systems. The larger idea has always been about building things without any preconceived notions of what success looked like. The absolute fun of creating is not being overwhelmed by constraints!
Goldy Yadav
Dr. Goldy Yadav is a postdoctoral researcher at UC Louvain in Brussels, Belgium. She has previously been a Fulbright Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (USA) while pursuing her PhD in Cognitive Science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar.
She has a Master's in Cognitive Science from IIT Gandhinagar, and a Bachelor's degree in Zoology (H) from the University of Delhi. Goldy has a keen interest in understanding how the human brain works and is actively involved in neuroscientific research. Her work focuses on how humans learn new skilled actions, and the brain processes that facilitate such learned behavior. Through her work, she has also demonstrated how retention of a newly acquired memory can be enhanced. Goldy believes this is the most exciting time to be involved in the field of neuroscience as we are uncovering something truly fascinating about the brain, its functions and the causes behind a number of neurological/psychological disorders. A lot, however, still remains unknown about this enigmatic tissue between our ears!
Navin Kabra
Navin Kabra is CTO and Co-Founder at ReliScore, a company that provides skill and capability assessment solutions to the software industry. He also consults and advises multiple GoI initiatives, as well as fintech companies in the private sector (Innoviti - payments processing, and FinIQ - derivatives and other financial products). Navin has several peer-reviewed articles in international conferences / journals and is also an inventor on 18 US Patents, 2 European Patents, and 1 Japanese Patent, filed as part of his work for 3 different companies (Symantec, Veritas, TeraData). Navin has an undergrad degree (IIT Bombay) and a Ph.D (Univ of Wisconsin, Madison), both in Computer Science.
Jayasree S
I am a teacher, educator and a mathematics enthusiast. One of the biggest pleasures in life for me is to see a child’s eyes light up with the joy of having learnt something new. Therefore I seek out opportunities to probe and understand student thinking and accordingly design mileus that bring that sparkle to their eyes. My years as an assessment lead at Educational Initiatives and the sustained interactions with students, from Secondary school to Undergrad levels, as a teacher have honed my skills in this direction. I have a Master’s degree in Mathematics from IIT Madras and a PhD in Mathematics education from Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR. In my thesis I explored ways of making mathematics accessible to all learners through modules that enable flexible ways of working in a non-evaluative atmosphere.
Radha Gopalan
Radha's view of the world is one of hidden connections and she believes that a significant part of learning is to unearth these connections. She is an environmental scientist by training, with a deep interest in exploring and practicing "transformative education for sustainable living". Towards this effort she is engaging actively with rural and urban communities to further the idea of food sovereignty.
After 18 years as a global environmental consultant, Radha also wore the teacher's hat for several years at the Rishi Valley School, teaching Environmental Sustainability. She is a Visiting Faculty at the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru and engages actively in popular education efforts around sustainability.
Radha has a bachelor's degree in Genetics from the Madras University, a Master's from Osmania University, and a Ph.D from IIT Bombay in Environmental Science.
Karthik Raghavan
Karthik Raghavan Ravi is an avid reader and lifelong learner with a deep curiosity for the way the world works. With a robust background in software engineering and functional safety, he currently serves as the Functional Safety Manager for CUDA at NVIDIA, where he leads initiatives to ensure the reliability and safety of parallel computing platforms.​
Over the years, Karthik has delved into an eclectic mix of subjects—from science and history to literature and philosophy—always seeking to uncover the hidden connections that shape our understanding of the world. His professional journey reflects a commitment to bridging technical excellence with thoughtful exploration.​
An enthusiastic educator at heart, Karthik finds joy in sharing ideas, sparking curiosity in others, and making complex concepts engaging and accessible. He has a particular knack for helping learners see the "big picture," while also encouraging them to explore details with wonder.​
When not immersed in a book or spending time with his family, he enjoys exploring nature, picking up new hobbies, and engaging in thoughtful conversations with curious minds.
Dhanya K
Dhanya taught as a biology teacher at Rishi Valley School for 5 years. She is formally trained in the Pedagogy of Biology and has worked in Science communication. Prior to teaching, she did a PhD in Neurogenetics at NCBS, Bangalore. She is interested in making biology more approachable and fun to learn, and in supporting students to be active learners.
As a teacher and a scientist, she enjoys writing, running and gardening. She is fearless in her choices of exploring her way of life and in making mistakes in the process. She loves to ask questions and think about thinking amongst other topics. As an individual, she deeply values kindness and compassion.
Anusha Krishnan
I am a parent, scientist, manager, popular science writer, and storyteller. Although I do not practice storytelling as a job, I use it all the time - at work (while communicating with co-workers and editing documents), in my hobby (I write popular science stories for news sites), and at home (when I explain things to my daughters or just tell my family about my day). I firmly believe that a good grounding in storytelling helps one become a good communicator, and that good communication skills are essential for everything in life. I have a PhD in ecology and molecular biology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where I worked on the fascinating relationship between fig trees and their pollinator wasps. Currently, I work as an associate manager for a medico-marketing company, where I manage workflows and edit manuscripts written for journal publication.
Kanchana
Suryakumar
Kanchana enjoys exploring school education both as a teacher and a student - especially mathematics education! She has over a decade of experience teaching high school mathematics and her current area of interest is teacher professional development. She collaborates with mathematics teachers to make classroom teaching and learning more meaningful and relevant. Kanchana is also an avid reader, board-gamer, and movie-lover. In her previous avatar she has spent more than a
decade in the software industry as a programmer and product manager.
Kanchana has Engineering and Science degrees from BITS, Pilani and an Education degree from TISS, Mumbai.
Sowmya Jatesan
Sowmya is convinced that if there's a way out of the gigantic mess that our world is today, it has to come from our children - their sensibilities, imaginations and capabilities. She is inspired by her Montessori training and 15+ years of experience engaging in various alternative and mainstream school settings as a teacher and Montessori trainer and teacher mentor.
Given the dynamic times we live in, Sowmya sees today's parenting as a complex societal, familial and personal challenge. Drawing from her experiences both a parent (of two young adults) and an educator, she has offered parenting workshops to school parents in several alternative schools.
At GenWise, she sees herself as fortunate to have worked closely with motivated students and engaged with their parents through the residential programs. Combining this with a multi-year teacher mentoring project has surfaced insights into the challenges and aspirations of the key stakeholders involved in a child's education and development - child, parents, school teachers and the school as an ecosystem.
Sowmya has a B. Tech degree from IIT Madras and a Masters degree from Pennsylvania State University. Sowmya has designed and delivered multiple GenWise residential programs and is currently leading the Teacher mentoring arm.
Vishnu Agnihotri
Vishnu Agnihotri is a co-founder of GenWise, a leader in programs for gifted students. At GenWise, he has been the academic director for several gifted programs, working with instructors to create courses that challenge students and help them to learn concepts more deeply. Prior to GenWise, Vishnu was Vice President- Assessments, at Educational Initiatives (Ei), and led the development of offerings such as ASSET, Mindspark Science and Detailed Assessment that have been recognized internationally for fostering conceptual learning.
Vishnu has a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras with over 30 years of national and international experience- more than half of which is in the field of school education.
Ramya Ramesh
​Co-founder, The Design Toolbox
Ramya is an architect and development practitioner passionate about contributing to the social and cultural spheres. Her interests lie at the intersection of culture, co-design and development. Having worked with architecture practices and social organizations, she has professional experience in architectural design, development research and curatorial projects. At present, she guides an architecture studio called ‘Designing with People’ at CEPT University, while working at ‘The Design Toolbox’, an interdisciplinary practice that she co-founded in 2017. Ramya has an MSc. in Building and Urban Design in Development (BUDD) from the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, and a B.Arch from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. She is a recipient of the Chevening Scholarship, the UK government’s global scholarship programme, funded by the FCO and partner organisations (2016-17), and the Archival and Museum Fellowship, offered by the India Foundation for the Arts and the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore (2019-20).
