Dr. Manas K Mandal is Distinguished Scientist and Director General – Life Sciences in DRDO HQ, New Delhi.  Prior to this, he was Chief Controller R&D (Life Sciences), DRDO from 01 March 2013 to 01 Sep 2013. He also was the Director of Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR), Delhi for about nine years.

Born on 01 November 1956, Dr Mandal obtained his Postgraduate and Doctorate degrees from Calcutta University in 1979 and 1984, respectively, and joined Banaras Hindu University as a Lecturer in 1983. He has completed his post-doctoral research programme at Delaware University (Fulbright Fellow), USA in 1986-87 and at Waterloo University (Shastri Fellow, Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council Fellow) Canada, in 1993-94.

Dr. Mandal was a Professor of Psychology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Kharagpur prior to joining DRDO. He was also a Visiting Professor at Kyushu University, Japan in 1997 and 2010-2011. During 2003 he was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer, Harvard University, USA. He received various research fellowships and scientific awards at national and international levels, such as, International Scientific Exchange Award (Canada), Fulbright Fellowship (USA), Shastri Fellowship (Canada), Seymour Kety grant (USA), Career Award (India), Young Scientist Award (India), DRDO Spin-off Technology Award, National Association of Medical Sciences Award, etc. In 2005, Dr. Mandal (and his team) was given away ‘Agni Award for Excellence in Self Reliance’ for the contribution towards the development of ‘Computerized Pilot Selection System.’ For his overall contribution to Psychology, he was been elected as the Fellow of National Association of Psychology in India (2012), and for his contribution to Military Psychology, he was given away the ‘Scientist of the Year’ award in 2006 by the Prime Minister of India.

Dr. Mandal specializes in the areas of social cognition and experimental neuropsychology. He has to his credit eleven books, and 105 research papers (82 International and 23 National) published in peer-reviewed journals. These researches are cited in more than 250 international journals and books.