Pramod R. Watekar

Pramod Ramdasrao Watekar was born in Falegaon of Yavatmal district in India. He received the Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India, in 2003. Prior to this, he received the Bachelor of Electronics Engineering and Master of Electronics Engineering degrees from SGGS Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nanded, India. From 1994 to 1999, he was a Lecturer in electronics engineering with Government Polytechnic Institute, Nagpur, India. Then, he moved to IIT Kharagpur, and from 1999 to February 2004, he was a Research Associate with the Optical Fiber R&D Center. In South Korea, he was a Brain-Korea Postdoctoral Fellow and a Professor (in contract) with Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju, Korea, from 2004 to 2010. Moving back to India, he became Professor of Electronics Engg. at VIT University, Chennai during 2010–2011. Since Dec. 2011, he has been working as an R&D manager in Sterlite Technologies Limited, Aurangabad, India. His research interest areas include specialty optical fibers for optical communication applications, high-power optical fiber lasers, $Q$-switched fiber lasers, quantum dots-doped optical fibers, rare-earth doped fibers, and specialty optical fiber devices.