LOS ANGELES (Diya TV) — Chandrashekhar Joshi, a prominent Indian American physicist, has been appointed the inaugural holder of the Mukund Padmanabhan Term Chair in Excellence at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. The appointment honors his decades-long contributions to plasma physics and high-energy accelerators.
The endowed chair was created through a $500,000 gift from UCLA alumnus Mukund Padmanabhan. It is one of two term chairs funded by Padmanabhan, who has supported numerous research and education initiatives at UCLA.
Joshi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, has spent over 40 years advancing experimental plasma physics. He leads UCLA’s Plasma Accelerator Group, which develops next-generation particle accelerators. These systems use plasma, or ionized gas, to accelerate electrons and positrons at high speeds. This allows scientists to produce high-energy particle beams in much smaller spaces than traditional accelerators.
His research is helping to make plasma-based accelerators and compact light sources smaller, more affordable, and more accessible. These technologies are considered key tools in addressing complex scientific challenges.
Joshi has published more than 600 scientific papers. He has received several prestigious awards, including the James Clerk Maxwell Prize, the Marie Curie Award and Medal, and the Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2014 and named a foreign fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 2025.
He is also celebrated for his teaching and mentorship. Joshi has guided 35 doctoral students and founded the undergraduate Fast Track honors program at UCLA. In 2015, he received the Engineering Educator of the Year Award for his contributions to engineering education. Mukund Padmanabhan, the benefactor behind the chair, earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from UCLA Samueli. He began his career at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center, working on speech recognition and signal processing.
Padmanabhan holds over 20 U.S. patents and is now a partner and statistical researcher at Renaissance Technologies, a New York-based hedge fund. He has received UCLA Samueli’s Professional Achievement Award and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.
Padmanabhan also leads the Guru Krupa Foundation, which helps students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds in the U.S. and India access quality education. His previous gifts to UCLA include other faculty chairs, scholarships, graduate fellowships, and support for semiconductor research labs.
Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park, dean of UCLA Samueli, praised Joshi’s appointment. She said his research in plasma accelerators and compact light sources will help make advanced scientific instruments smaller, more efficient, and more widely available.
Joshi’s work continues to push the boundaries of high-energy accelerator research. He trains the next generation of scientists who will lead the field. His discoveries are expected to transform particle physics research while reducing the cost and size of accelerator technology.
Joshi earned his Ph.D. in applied physics from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom in 1978. He previously worked as a research associate at the National Research Council of Canada. Over the years, he has combined groundbreaking research with mentorship, creating opportunities for young scientists to excel.
