Founder
Secretary-General of the United Nations
Ban Ki-moon is the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Before becoming Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations.

He entered diplomatic service the year he graduated from university, accepting his first post in New Delhi, India. His priorities have been to mobilize world leaders around a set of new global challenges, from climate change and economic upheaval to pandemics and increasing pressures involving food, energy and water. He has sought to be a bridge-builder, to give voice to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and to strengthen the Organization itself.

In the words of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “The Academic Impact aims to generate a global movement of minds to promote a new culture of intellectual social responsibility. It is animated by a commitment to certain bedrock principles.”

Ramu Damodaran is Deputy Director for Partnerships and Public Engagement in the United
Nations Department of Public Information’s Outreach Division. He was earlier Chief of its Civil Society Service from November 2002. His responsibilities focus particularly on outreach to, and partnerships with, the non-governmental, academic and private sector constituencies, as well as to the general public.

Mr. Damodaran is chief of the United Nations Academic Impact initiative, which aligns institutions of higher learning and research with the objectives of the United Nations and the States and peoples who constitute it.

He was a member of the Indian Foreign Service and was promoted to the rank of Ambassador. Mr. Damodaran served as Executive Assistant to the Prime Minister of India and served in diplomatic missions in Moscow and to the United Nations.

Prof. Mahesh Bangad, an Assistant Professor at BNCA since 2010, has been an active member of the UNAI Hub since its inception. Prof. Bangad is a Masters in Project management from UK and has another Masters in Environmental Architecture from SPPU, Pune.

He has been instrumental in the organisation and conduction of the Demola Workshops series held at BNCA, co-ordination of the student activities and their involvement in the UNAI Hub.

Currently he is co-ordinating the Kenya Program and is guiding a group of students for the Design interventions to be done at the Ilbisil School near Nairobi in Kenya and had also accompanied the group in March 2017 for a pilot visit.

Ar. Swapnil Gawande specializes in generative design methodologies involving computational techniques and advance material sciences and technologies, investigating the potential they hold within the domain of architecture and urbanism. His ongoing design-research works originally initiated when he was pursuing his bachelor’s degree and were further taken ahead to explore at an advanced level at the Architectural Association, London where he completed his post-graduation in Emergent Technologies and Design.

His major interests lie in exploring looped data transitions between digital, analogue and simulative experimentations of material-informed geometries and realize them through advanced digital fabrication techniques. These initiatives are undertaken in his design collective named STUDIO_DRA[AFT] which rigorously implements a Research Based Design Methodology as an effective strategy to provide novel solutions at different scales.