The Science of Happiness and Wellbeing

Prof. Manas K Mandal’s research contribution to the field of psychological science spanned over 35 years with primary focus on affect processing in the brain, in general, and in schizophrenia, in particular. His doctoral work on affect (emotion) processing in schizophrenia has been an original work that paved the way for the formulation many research hypotheses later. Prof. Mandal continued his endeavour in later part of his research in uncovering the role of cerebral hemispheres in emotion processing. The input about cerebral lateralization was drawn from his earlier work in which he proposed that the right hemisphere activity that regulates emotion processing may be intact in schizophrenia. While at the Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur, Prof. Mandal pursued the domain of behavioural neuroscience in normal human behavior, in which he explored the difficulties faced by the left and mixed (clumsy) handers in the society. His researches let us know what percentage of the left handers are found in India, what makes a left hander switch handedness pattern, why the left handers are more prone to accidents than the right handers, etc. As the Director of Defense Institute of Psychological Research (DRDO), prof. Mandal engaged himself in a large number of activities towards the human performance development of the community of armed / paramilitary forces (National Security Guards, CRPF, etc.). Noteworthy, amongst these include (a) getting the best cadet for the armed / paramilitary forces through scientifically developed selection system, (b) analyzing critical behavior like mob hysteria or terrorism, (c) imparting mass counseling for man-made and natural disasters, (d) reducing the incidence of self-defeating behaviours in soldiers like suicide and fratricide, etc. Currently he is the Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness at IIT Kharagpur

Priyadarshi Patnaik is a Professor of English and Communication in the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur. He is also the Secretary, Nehru Museum of Science and Technology, IIT Kharagpur, and Rector’s Nominee, Technology Students Gymkhana, IIT Kharagpur. His areas of research include Visual communication, Music and emotion, Communication and culture, Media communication, Translation, and Digital humanities. He has authored and edited more than 14 volumes of text, reference, and creative work. He has a number of research papers, translations, poems, short stories, illustrations and photographs in many national and international journals. He is currently one of the Co-PIs involved with a number of cultural and heritage projects under the MHRD Mega-Project, SandHI.