Recently retired from teaching at the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay. He has served as Head, Industrial Design Centre, Dean, IIT Bombay and later as a Member, Governing Council, IIT Bombay. Also acts in advisory capacity for several institutions.
After retiring he mentors for a startup Twobythree involved in Gamification of user understanding.
Alumnus of Sir JJ college of architecture, he later worked as an architect for 4 years before switching over to Industrial Design in 1970. As UNESCO fellow he studied Industrial Design at Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Since then, he has been dividing his time between design education, design research and design related consulting for companies. Some of his designs have won national and international recognitions.
His current work also includes designing and theorizing on game design. As a researcher, he has focused on areas like ‘product semantics’ and ‘object and culture relationship’. He has also been exploring the role of mental imagery, spatial intelligence and visual thinking in design problem solving. He has extensively published and lectured nationally and internationally on these research areas. He is also on the advisory board of several international research journals
Website: www.udayathavankar.in
Blog: https://udayathavankar.wordpress.com
Papers: https://iitbombay.academia.edu/udayathavankar
http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in/projects/idc_games/index.php
https://www.facebook.com/KHELatIDC/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzAg6dNf1gc&list=PLhyRO-11kU_7To1wCydPg07wNa0s2uRLp4.