Ashwin Mahesh

Ashwin Mahesh did his schooling at Army High School, Bengaluru and Vidya Mandir Senior Secondary School (1986), Chennai and then studied Physics at St Joseph's College of Arts and Science (1989). Later, he did his MBA from Pondicherry University (1991), M.S. in Astronomy from Vanderbilt University (1993) and PhD in Atmospheric Science/Climate Science/Geophysics from the University of Washington (1999). He is married to Sapana Rawat and has two daughters, Aditi and Mahiti. He returned to Bangalore in 2004.[4]

Ashwin Mahesh was a research faculty at NASA Goddard Earth Science and Technology Centre in USA.[1] During his Masters studies at Vanderbilt University guided by David Weintraub, he helped develop a technique for discovering newly forming stars, and this was used to discovered a star, known as 'the companion to LkHα 234'. From 1993 to 2005, he was an atmospheric scientist studying clouds and snow in Antarctica with Stephen Warren, and later working on satellite-based cloud detection technologies.[8] His PhD and subsequent work helped improve algorithms for cloud detection over snow and ice-covered surfaces, and this was later confirmed by the launch of the first space-borne laser by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter Satellite mission team that he was part of.

After returning from the US, Ashwin became a researcher at IIM, Bangalore & at the CiSTUP in IISc.[9] He was also an adjunct faculty member at International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.[1] and Urban Research Strategist at the Office of Urban Affairs for the Karnataka government. Ashwin become a driving force behind numerous urban development projects in Bangalore including rationalisation of the BMTC bus service, traffic management solutions,[10] cleaning up and preservation of lakes.[2] He was also part of the Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development Task Force (ABIDe).[11]

Ashwin has founded a number of social enterprises. He was listed in The Smart List 2012: 50 people whose ideas will change the world by Wired UK.[1] He was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship for Social Development. In 1998, he co-founded India Together, an online magazine that covers public affairs, policy and development in India.[7] He co-founded & is the CEO of Mapunity, a social tech company in Bangalore, that develops IT-led solutions to social problems and development challenges in India.[12] In October 2014, he co-founded India's first 100% Electric Vehicles-based transportation service, Lithium, which began deploying electric vehicles to serve the employee transportation market in metro cities; he briefly took over as the interim CEO of the company in February 2020, but returned to Mapunity and India Together at the of the year, and to establish the How Institute - a Centre for Public Problem Solving, an action-research group for building capacity in public administration and planning.

During the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, Ashwin helped create the #CovidRural volunteer group in 100+ districts across several states that worked with district and taluk hospitals to help them find donors for new infrastructure, medical devices and supplies. The How Institute also began working on an initiative to make CSR funding in India more impactful. He is also interested in heritage and history, and is part of the Kaliloka team documenting the vernacular architectural traditions of the different districts of Karnataka. Ashwin is a childhood polio survivor, and is a Director at Artilab Foundation, which incubates product and service innovations for disabled and elderly persons. He is also an advisor to Fourth Wave Foundation, which runs the Nanagu Shaale program for full inclusion of disabled children in schools. He has written for a number of news publications, including a regular column for the Deccan Herald since 2019.