Mr. Manilal P, an alumnus of (Cochin University of Science and technology (CUSAT), has worked formore than three decades at CSIR-CFTRI, Mysore in various capacities, before superannuating as a Chief Scientist. In his earlier job, he has been Head, R&D Planning; IT Services & Computation Solutions and Coordinator for Nutro-Phyto Incubation Centre & Common Instrumentation Facility (NPIC-CIF), funded by Govt. of Karnataka since 2014 and later established a Food Business Accelerator to catalyse innovation in this sector.
In the outreach segment, functioned as Nodal Scientist for viz. CSIR-800, JIGYASA, CSIR Integrated Skill Initiatives and MHRD programmes on instilling science education in school children. Further, he created successful online portals viz. FreeTech Portal, SME Corner, Micro-entrepreneurs network, Machinery Portal etc for supporting entrepreneurships in the grassroot level.
He has been PI of Technology Diffusion studies of Millets based products (DSIR), Technology Entrepreneurship Development Programme(DST), Data Analytics based on Big Data (CSIR), CSIR Immunity Mission, Traditional Knowledge Digital Library on Food (CSIR) apart from serving as a Core Member for establishing BioNEST, CoE on Millet Research, PMFME Incubation Centre at CFTRI.
He was a regular faculty for M.Sc. Food Technology programme and guided over 25 batch of students for BTech/MCA/MTech etc in the area of IT. He has published 10 MS in peer-reviewed journals on optimisation, databases and statistical techniques with several conference presentations.