Sugandh Malhotra | Ph.D.

Designer | Futurist | Professor

IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay

Obtained Ph.D. in Design from IIT Delhi in the area of Design Forecasting.

I, Dr. Sugandh Malhotra, have overall twenty-two years experience, out of which sixteen years professional experience in industrial design and automotive styling industry in various roles, and eight years academic experience at IIT Bombay. I worked on design projects for marquees in the industry that include Honda R&D, Hero Global Design, Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz Ltd., SETI Labs Berkley, Aprilia Motors Italy, Bombardier Canada and most of the leading automotive and consumer brands of India. Have been instrumental in design of over 18 techno-commercially successful launched products at a pan India level. Have won many International and National level design awards. Took keen interest in teaching design and has been mentoring students from many leading institutions such as IIT Delhi, IIT Roorkee, SPA Delhi, Lady Irving College, IILM, Pearl Academy among others.

Presently, working as a full Professor in MVD program at IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay, India.

Research interest areas

Design research methods, future design possibilities, trend research and design forecasting, intelligent mobility systems and design for real problems.

PhD thesis

Research Framework for future design possibilities

A theoretical design forecasting framework based on the parameters that drive the design of successful products. This is a seminal work in deducing values that are considered important for a specific design domain and determining which of these values should be prioritised for the future by using Design for Future (DeF) framework.

[Access PDF from the Archive (IIT Delhi)]

Teaching experience

Over 8 years teaching experience as a full-time faculty and over 6 years experience as Discipline Coordinator, Mobility & Vehicle design program at IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay

Overall over 15 years teaching, project and PhD mentoring and collaborative research experience as regular speaker/visiting faculty/subject expert/researcher at Monash University-Australia, TU Braunschweig-Germany, SPA Delhi, IIT Delhi, ISB Hyderabad, IIT Roorkee, Lady Irwin College, Pearl Academy Noida, IILM Gurgaon, Sushant School of Design and currently as a full-time faculty at IIT Bombay

Other Initiatives

Innovation Forecasting community (www.facebook.com/innovationforecasting)

Social initiative “Beat this Heat” to save electricity.

Publications

• Malhotra, S., Das, L.K. & Chariar, V.M. (2015). Classification of Forecasting Methods, Paper presented and published in Conference Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Design Creativity (ICDC) 2015, Bangalore, 12th-14th January, 2015.
• Malhotra, S., Das, L.K., Chariar, V.M. (2014). Design Research Methods for Future Mapping, Paper presented and published in Conference Proceedings of Sustainability, Technology and Education (STE) 2014, Taiwan, December, 2014.
• Malhotra, Sugandh. “Framework for forecasting design possibilities.” PhD dissertation, IIT Delhi, 2016.