Lalit Kumar Das

Lalit Kumar Das pioneered Industrial Design education at IIT Delhi. He developed a program that is an excellent blend of design sensitivities and industrial propensities. Many of his pupils have won awards in national and international design contests and oversee design studios in India.

Lalit Das did his B.Tech from IIT Kanpur. Thereafter he did his Master of Technology in Design Engineering from IIT Delhi and then Master of Art in Industrial Design from the Royal College of Art, London.

Lalit is deeply interested in design and the inherent ability of humans to create. He has worked and designed products for the office, home and industry. He has designed for the differently enabled like children with cerebral palsy and others who are orthopedically handicapped. He is the founding editor of Design for All India newsletter. He has also designed educational and research equipment. He has worked with artisans and has conceptualized distant education for artisans under the banner of IGNOU. He is deeply interested in sustainable approach to design and a non-parochial nonpartisan framework for study of design. He has conducted ergonomic studies for the Design of the Operational Control Centre for Delhi Metro, Bangalore Metro and Hyderabad Metro, Western Dedicated Freight Corridor).

He has many publications to his credit. His doctoral students are in a variety of areas from emotion, sustainability, e-governance, image processing, frugal design, etc. He continues to supervise doctoral students at IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, DTU & NID. He has been developing the National Design Policy and is a member of the National Committee on Design and Artisan Development. He has widely travelled and has worked at the Industrial Design Centre, I.I.T. Bombay and at the Department of Fine Art, University of Manitoba, Canada.

Mr.Das has served as a jury for many national level design awards. He has been an Expert Member in the ‘Science & Society’ Program and Technopreneur Promotion Program (TePP) of Department of Science & Technology. In the past he also served as a local commissioner in two IPR related cases of the Delhi High Court. He was also a member of Program Advisory & Monitoring Committee member of the Government of India’s Design Clinic Scheme for MSME that provides financial & design support to MSME for development of new product design.

He has delivered TEDX talks on enabling innovation, and values that shape complex systems. He is deeply interested in Sustainable Design, Circular Economy and Emergent Systems.

He has been the guiding light in the setting of the Design Program at Delhi Technological University as an Honorary Faculty from 2018-2023. Currently, he is a distinguished Visiting Professor at IIT Bombay and a Guest Faculty at the Department of Design & Innovation, Jamia Millia Islamia University. He has been teaching at IIIT Jabalpur, School of Planning & Architecture, Lady Irwin College and IIT Delhi as a guest faculty.