Dr. Ashawant, the executive director here at mdi, was born in Ambala Cantt and received his B.E. Electrical Engineering degree from M.S.R.I.T., Bangalore in 1989 and M.S. and Ph.D. in 1991 and 1997, respectively, both in Microelectronics, from Santa Clara University (SCU), California. His Ph.D. Thesis is entitled "Performance and Reliability Studies of Advanced Silicon-Based Devices." He worked as Visiting Researcher at University of California, Berkeley in 1993, followed by 14 months as Visiting Researcher at Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo. From 1990-1993 and again from 1995-1996 he taught at Santa Clara University ending as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In 1996 he worked for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a leading manufacturer of computer chips, where he performed research on Ultra-thin Gate Oxides for future generations of microprocessors.In 2002, Ashawant helped found Ambala College of Engineering and Applied Research (ACE).

Dr. Gupta received the Ross Tucker Master's Memorial Award in 1991 for his Master's Thesis from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers. He has been a Volunteer for the Bonded Labor Liberation Front, New Delhi and Group leader for the Local Chapter of The Hunger Project, Banagalore. He was Vice President of the Association of Graduate Engineering Students, Santa Clara University. Dr. Gupta can understand and speak conversational Japanese. He has published and presented many papers in international journals and conferences.