Director
Dr. Duvvuri Seshagiri, Scientist ‘H’, has assumed charge as Director, Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL), Kochi, with effect from 01 June 2024. Dr. Seshagiri was serving as the Head of Airborne and Space Borne Radar Division at LRDE, Bangalore before assuming charge as the 11th Director of this prestigious System laboratory.
Dr. D Seshagiri holds a BE degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from A.U.Engineering College, Waltair and M.Tech in Integrated Electronics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. He has obtained PhD from DIAT, Pune. He joined LRDE, Bangalore in 2002 as Scientist ‘D’ and worked in the prestigious program-Air Defence (AD). He had operationalized very long range radar systems and played a key role in multiple AD missions. He was the lead of the radar system group for airborne systems and pioneered the design and development of India's first indigenous active phased array radar, LSTAR, which led to the development of primary radar of AEW&C.
He joined as the System Engineer for project AEW&C and later became the Project Director. There he led the development of the first indigenous airborne radar with primary mode as air to air. He developed many innovative techniques to handle airborne clutter and also developed technologies for enhancing the detection range. He also served as the project director of Uttam, the indigenous radar used in Tejas – Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). The project demonstrated the country's capability to design, develop and operationalize complex, modern AI radar systems and multiple fighters are on the anvil of being fitted with this radar including Su-30 MKI, Mig-29K and all the variants of LCA. These two Airborne Radars made India self-reliant in the Airborne Radar Segment. India is the third country in the world to successfully develop both Airborne and Fire Control Radars. He played a pioneering role in making India self reliant in Airborne Radars.
He has received multiple awards including DRDO Scientist of the Year Award in 2011, IETE-IRS Award (2019), SKOCH Platinum Award (2016) and Path Breaking Research Award (2020) for development of Uttam radar for LCA. He has published around 40 research articles in prestigious national and international conferences and journals.