Chandrashekhar Joshi, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering and holder of the Mukund Padmanabhan Term Chair in Excellence at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has been elected a foreign fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.
The academy honors and promotes exceptional scientific achievement, as well as its practical application in India. Joshi was one of 12 foreign fellows named in the academy’s 2026 class.
An internationally acclaimed researcher, Joshi was elected for making foundational breakthroughs in plasma-based and laser-driven particle accelerators. At UCLA, he leads the Plasma Accelerator Group, which investigates new techniques to improve the efficiency and applications of these advanced accelerator systems, with impacts ranging from fundamental physicals to medicine. These compact devices, capable of generating powerful beams of electrons and positrons, are among the most important scientific tools invented in the 20th century.
Joshi’s numerous honors include the Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award from the Gothenburg Physics Centre in Sweden in 2018, the Marie Curie Award and Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2017, and the James Clerk Maxwell Prize from the American Physical Society in 2006. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2014.
The Indian National Science Academy was founded in 1935 as the National Institute of Sciences of India. In 1945, it gained official recognition from the Indian government as the representative body of Indian scientists to institutions such as the International Science Council. Other academy foreign fellows with connections to UCLA include C. Kumar Patel, a distinguished professor emeritus of physics and astronomy, and Utpal Banerjee, a distinguished professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.