Brief Profile of Mr. Bhupendra Singh Bhatia
Born in 1944, Sri Bhupendra Singh Bhatia got his Bachelor of Engineering (BE) form MS University, Baroda in 1966 and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1970. He was a fellow of East West Centre, Honolulu.
Sri Bhatia worked for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in several key capacities from 1971 to 2007. During this period, he was professionally involved in, and personally committed to, multifarious Development Projects in tele-education and tele-medicine. During 2007-08, he worked as Advisor, Media Lab Asia, Development of IT, Government of India.
Currently, he is Consultant, Commonwealth of Learning (CEMCA), New Delhi engaged in a project on Quality Assurance and Multimedia Learning Materials. He is also Advisor to the Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Application and Geo Informatics, Gandhinagar.
At ISRO, as Project Director EDUSAT, he was chiefly responsible for interacting with user agencies – Universities and State Governments Organisations – to formulate proposals and monitor thesis completion, implementation and evaluation. As part of his professional activities, he organised an international conference on Benchmarking of International Practices in the Use of Multimedia for Formal Education. The conference was jointly organised with Commonwealth of Learning, and included participants from South Africa, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Based on the Indian experience, a proposal for a Pan African network to provide satellite connectivity for education was successfully worked out.
Sri Bhatia, work in the area of tele-medicine aims at providing connectivity between rural hospitals and urban super specialty centres for patients in the former to receive the benefit of expert consultation from the latter. Over the past few years, more than a hundred rural medical centres have been provided this connectivity.
He has visited Canada and some European countries: as Visiting Faculty at Instructional Space University, Strasbourg, France and as Member of Jury at International Film Competition, Berlin.
His deep interest in teaching and guiding research countries unabated.