Giridhar Madras

Giridhar Madras is an Indian chemical engineer and a professor at the Indian Institute of Science.[1] He is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in 2009.[2] He has published more than 550 journal articles, fetching close to 20,000 citations [3]. This makes him one of most cited scientists working in an engineering field in India. He has graduated over 100 students, including 50 Ph.D students [4]. He also writes a blog[5] about life at IISc.

After a sexual harassment complaint filed by a doctoral student advised by him and subsequent investigation by IISc’s internal complaints committee that confirmed the allegation to be true, the IISc governing council asked him to seek "compulsory retirement" in October 2018. At first, Honourable Justice Devdas of Karnataka high court has stayed the compulsory retirement of Prof. Giridhar Madras on 7 January 2019, stating several legal violations were made by ICC in the investigation process.The court concurred with Prof Madras that the IISc failed to give him a show-cause notice before forcing him into retirement. Further, the woman had been satisfied with the professor’s response to her first complaint which was eventually closed.[6]. Subsequently, on 6 August 2019, Honourable Justice B.P. Bajanthri of Karnataka high court absolved Professor Madras of any wrong doing in the aforementioned case, and directed IISc to take action against the Director and the ICC "for violating the rule prohibiting disclosure of the contents of a complaint of sexual harassment and inquiry proceedings. [7],[8] "