Shri. M. Chandradathan Director, 01/01/2013 - 30/06/2014 LPSC, ISRO

Shri. M Chandradathan was born on 8^th May, 1951 at Varkala in Thiruvananthapuram District. He has undergone his high school studies at Government High School, Varkala and the pre-degree course at Sivagiri Sri Narayana College. He graduated in Chemical Engineering in the year 1971 from Government Engineering College, Thrissur which was then affiliated to Kerala University. He took his M.Tech in Rocket Propulsion from Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) during 1985.

Immediately after graduation he has worked for a short duration of six months at Manipal Engineering College as Lecturer in Chemical Engineering. He joined ISRO (then SSTC) Thiruvananthapuram in January, 1972. Initially he was working for the SLV-3 Project during its design phase and later moved to the development of solid propellant formulations for SLV-3 at the unit called Rocket Propellant Plant (RPP) under the guidance of Shri. M R Kurup. During this period he has held many additional responsibilities in various fields of management and carried out good number of experiments on solid motors. Subsequently, he was assigned with the responsibility of development and realization of rocket nozzles mainly for solid motors. From 2000 to 2004 he was heading the group for ablative nozzle production where he has developed and realized the flex nozzle for the S200 motor which is the strap-on booster for GSLV Mk-III. During 2002, when the core team of GSLV Mk-III was formed, he has been assigned with the major responsibility of Project Director, S200 booster for GSLV Mk-III, which he continued up to 2008.

Considering his vast experience in the field of Solid Motors he was transferred to Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR) in 2004. During the beginning of 2006 he has been given additional responsibility for realizing the new Solid Propellant Plant (SPP), the world class solid booster production plant for realizing S200 solid boosters. During the period from 2004 to 2008 he held various position at SDSC, SHAR from General Manager, Solid Propellant Space Booster Plant (SPROB), Deputy Director, SPROB & SPP and Vehicle Assembly and Static Test Facilities (VAST), Associate Director, SDSC SHAR and finally as Director of the SDSC SHAR Centre since August, 2008. From January 2013 to June 2014 he was heading the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), one of the lead Centres of ISRO in the area of Liquid Propulsion Systems for Launch Vehicles and Spacecraft programmes. From July 2014 to May 2015 he served as Director VSSC. He has been honoured with "Individual Service Award-2006" of ISRO received from Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam in June, 2007, "Outstanding Chemical Engineer" Award-2009 from IIChE and "Performance Excellence Award" of ISRO for the year 2009. Goverment of India has honoured him with padmasree award in 2014.