Workshop for Next-Gen Women Leaders in STEM
From Academia to Leadership
19 - 20 March 2026
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi
Registration Closed
About the Workshop
The aim of this workshop is to make women faculty, scientists, and research students aware of the importance of leadership by focusing on what it means to be a leader and guiding them towards the tools, techniques, and skills needed to succeed in leadership roles.
- • To learn key leadership styles and traits of an effective leader
- • To know the importance of emotional intelligence and teamwork in leadership
- • To apply personality tests and introspection to understand one's own leadership style
- • To learn the importance of effective communication as a leader
- • To analyze challenges in women leadership and discuss best practices
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Preeti Aghalayam
Prof. Preeti Aghalayam is the Dean, Global Engagement, IIT Madras & first woman director of the IIT Madras Zanzibar campus. She is a professor in the Chemical Engineering department at IIT Madras and has a strong background in academia. She graduated from IIT Madras with a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering and PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Distinguished Speakers
Dr. Archana Santosh Nanoty
Dr. Archana Santosh Nanoty is a distinguished academic leader in Electrical Engineering and institutional administration. Currently she is the Registrar of NIT Hamirpur. She is a DST-GOI research referee and is one of the inventors of 4 granted Patents. She has completed an executive program on Leadership & change Management by IIM Raipur. She is also a Government of India certified music therapist. With her expertise she has worked as Industry consultant and Trainer -National Power Training Institute.
Dr. Pooja Vyavahare
Dr. Pooja Vyavahare is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Tirupati. She holds a Ph.D. from IIT Bombay. She was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was selected for the Phase 2 of the Women in Science Leadership Programme (WiSLP) by DST, which includes advanced training in Coventry University, United Kingdom.
Prof. Sarika Jalan
Prof. Sarika Jalan is a Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Indore in Department of Physics. Before joining IIT Indore, Sarika was senior research scientist at NUS, Singapore. She did her PhD from Physical Research Laboratory Ahmedabad, followed by Postdoctorate at Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in Sciences, Leipzig, and Max-Planck-Institute for Physics of Complex Systems Dresden, Germany. Prof Jalan served as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Computational Science (JOCS Elsevier) (2021-2025), and currently is section Editor for Chaos, Solitons and Fractals from January 2026. She is elected executive member of Complex Systems Society, awarded with prestigious Serb Power Fellow (2022-2025), and recently been nominated for founding cohort of INSA women associate.
Prof. Shilpi Sharma
Prof. Shilpi Sharma is a distinguished academician with a Ph.D. from Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany and post-doctoral experience from the German Research Center for Environmental Health. Beyond her scientific contributions, she holds Associate Dean Academics (Outreach and New Initiatives) position at IIT Delhi.
