Padma Shri Dr. R L Kashyap

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Emeritus at Purdue University, USA and also director of the Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute of Vedic Culture.

He has made fundamental contributions both in the field of Computer Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence, as well as in the field of Vedic Studies.

For his work in the field of machine intelligence, he has received several major awards such as the King-Sun Fu award for fundamental contributors to pattern recognition (1990), given by the International Association of Pattern Recognition. He also received several best research paper awards such as J.C. Bose Award (1991), best paper award of the National Electronics Conference (1966), the second best paper award in the journal, ‘Pattern Recognition’. During his 33 years at Purdue, he has guided 50 students for Ph.D degree. He has published more than 250 research papers in advanced scientific Journals and delivered more than 200 papers at National and International conference, including several keynote speeches.

He was also the associate director for the centre for intelligent manufacturing; The journal ‘IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analyses and Machine Intelligence’, started by Prof. Fu and Kashyap in the seventies is the leading journal in the area. His doctoral work ‘Ho-Kashyap Algorithms’ done in 1965 is quoted even in todays textbooks.

In the field of Vedic studies, Kashyap has made fundamentle contribution including the complete translation into English of all the four major and most ancient collection of verses in Sanskrit namely Rig Veda Samhita, Krishna Yajurveda Samhita and Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda (one part), consisting together of about 25000 metrical verses in the Sanskrit of Veda-s (different from classical Sankrit). He has continued the work of Sri Aurobindo and Kapali Sastry in revealing the deep meanings of Veda mantra-s.

The translation has received deep praise from several well known authorities in Veda. In additioin to the translations, he has written in English about 25 compact expository books explaining the secrets in the Veda suktas. Most of them are translated into various Indian languages. Under his direction his major works are getting translated into Indian languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu. Now the entire Kannada translation available in part is to be completed in 2012. Some of his books have gone to several reprints. For his work in Vedic studies, he has received the ‘Vedanga Vidvan’ award instituted by the Govt. of India Institution, Maharshi Sandepani Veda Vidya Patashala.

Prof. Kashyap received his early education in National College, Bangalore, Central College, Indian Institute of Science (the degrees of ME and DIISc.) He received his Ph.D from Harvard in 1966, where he was a Gordan McKay Prize fellow. He was awarded the distinguished Alumnus award by IISc in 2010.

He was felicitated with “Rajyotsava Award” in 2012 by the Govt. of Karnataka and with “Vishveshwaraya Vijnana Puraskara” in 2013 by Swadeshi Science Movement and “Veda Brahma” Award in 2013 by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangalore.

Dr. Kashyap was honoured with Honorary D.Litt. by Karnataka Sanskrit University, Bangalore in 2014.

He still holds regular, weekly classes at SAKSHI explaining the deep meaning of the Veda mantra-s and Upanishads.