Visiting Faculty

Arvind V.  obtained his Masters’ Degree in Electronics and Communication in 1987 from IIT-Roorkee. He first worked as a Scientist at the ISRO Satellite Center, Bangalore, India, where he built Spread Spectrum Systems for satellite ranging and an L-band RF Signal Simulator for GPS. He researched on Phase-Locked Loops, Injection Locked Oscillators, and Radar Studies of the Clear Air. He then moved to the Center for Development of Telematics, Bangalore, where he managed the design of Line-of-Sight Radios. He also managed the development of the CDMA cellular system. His next stint was with Wipro Technologies, Bangalore where he managed Design and Consultancy Projects in the area of telecom, ATM/FR/IP, RF and Telecom Test systems, working with companies such as Alcatel, Digital Lightwave, Corvis, and 3DSP.  Then  at Texas Instruments, he managed the Systems and Algorithms group – the development of Signal Processing Algorithms for Wi-Fi (802.11n), GPS, and Advanced Radio Architectures. He has also worked in the organized philanthropy sector, with Akshara Foundation where he built a system of libraries that served 1400 Government Primary Schools in Bangalore Urban District. At NSCEL, IIM-Bangalore, where he was a cofounder with a start-up in the primary education sector, with products for teaching English and Math aimed at the affordable private schools in Bangalore.

Arvind joined Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology in 2014. Here he taught courses on Mathematical Models for Design, Design Thinking from Short Fiction, and Data Visualization in R. He also developed and taught a course on TRIZ, the Russian system of Innovation. Curently as a visiting faculty at SMI apart from the courses mentioned above, he also teaches Creative Mathematics and DataViz/Stats/ML in R.

Avnit Singh is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work explores memory, grief, ecology, and the quiet complexities of everyday life. Moving across drawing, text, watercolor, clay, and installation, she is interested in how humans form relationships—with themselves, with one another, and with the environments they inhabit. Her practice often begins with the overlooked: small shifts in landscape, traces of personal history, and the emotional residues held in objects and places. Avnit’s recent work engages with water, transformation, and the changing geographies of home, using slow, meditative processes such as wet-on-wet watercolor to cultivate care, presence, and reflection. She is the founder of Partly Purple, a community space for dialogue and companionship, and has exhibited at the Kochi Biennale Collateral and co-curated the Tbilisi Triennial (2018). At Srishti Manipal Institute, she teaches across General Studies and Contextual Enquiry, offering courses that integrate embodied learning, ecological sensitivity, and personal narrative. Her courses include Need for Memory is Need for History, Forgetting and Remembering, Diary Writing in the Age of Instagram, Play and Invent: Ulat Bani by Kabir, Form and Structure, Body and Ecology: 101 Ways to Be a Forest, Body and Media, Body and Ecology: Self and Surrounding, and Spaces and Places: Avalahalli.She lives and works in Bangalore.

Janak Mistry served as Design Principal and senior faculty at the Srishti Manipal Institute (SMI) from 2010 to 2023, where he founded and led the Business Services and System Design program and established the Natural Fibres Lab to explore emerging materials. He now continues to teach and mentor as Professor Emeritus. An alumnus of the National Institute of Design, Janak brings over 35 years of experience across product, space, and system and service design. He has led major projects for clients such as The Future Group, TVS, Tupperware, Havells and Elgi Industries. As proprietor of Beeline Design (New Delhi), he created contemporary utility and home furniture at a time when the Indian furniture market was still nascent. His broader portfolio includes a knock-down outdoor proscenium theatre for the theatre group JANAM, a shop-fit system for Fabindia, kitchen appliances for Elgi India Ltd., and wool based acoustic and thermal insulation products for the Centre for Pastoralism. Janak holds intellectual property for hybrid cargo carrier systems, including the Hybrid Electric Cargo Scooter (Scoo-Go™), currently under development at SMI. He writes on Medium about his insights and design philosophy, materials, and shared-use cultures (https://medium.com/me/stories?tab=posts-published) and is the author of DEEP SEE (2024), a mobile-photography exploration of the extraordinary in the everyday.

Prerna is an interdisciplinary designer specializing in immersive and interactive design, including extended reality (XR). Her expertise spans entrepreneurial innovation, strategic design, and systems thinking, bringing a multifaceted and future-oriented approach to problem-solving. As a visiting faculty member in the Human-Centric Design discipline at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, she integrates design principles with emerging technologies to craft meaningful experiential outcomes. Her practice and teaching aim to help students explore the evolving possibilities of digital and immersive design.

I have been in the field of arts education, helped set up spaces for the same, to create environments that allow for a diverse range of explorations. I began my work in Delhi, continue to work in creative educational spaces in Bangalore; conducted and initiated workshops in other schools and educational set ups in different parts of India.

My creative practices include writing, illustrating; have worked on children’s picture books, been a free lance writer for a passage of time for newspapers. Nature has inspired and been a concern; an intimate part of my personal and educational practices. My work with learning in schools has included spaces for creative ways for introducing language; writing scripts for plays, help directing the same. A Kabir project play based on the theme of ulatbansis was also part of a Valley school workshop; a musical that brought Kabir and Dr. Seuss on the same platform.

Crafts and hands on practices have been an intimate part of my journeys. My home has housed my crafts studio, one that employed artisans, worked with terracoatta and bead ornaments, hands on stationery, story telling dolls. It also has its own collections of hand made brooms, ephemeral dynamic toys and some native cloth doll collections. My work, of transdisciplinary nature has taken its own organic course.