Professor Girijesh Mehta is a Distinguished Honorary Professor of the Department of Physics of the IIT, Kanur, India. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Columbia, USA. He worked as a researcher at Brookhaven USA, Saclay-France and Harwell- U.K. In 1964 he joined the IIT in Kanpur and established a Nuclear Accelerator laboratory. He was Joint Director (1984) and Director (1988-2001) of the Nuclear Science Center (now Inter University Accelerator Center) in New Delhi and Vice Chancellor of the University of Allahabad (2001- 2004). Since 1983 he is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Sciences. Prof. Mehta has received several awards including the Excellence Corporate Award of the National Foundation of Indian Engineers and the Homi Bhabha Award for research in Applied Sciences in 1996.