Prof. Shishir Deshpande did his M.Sc. Physics at Nagpur in 1984 and completed doctoral research in 1992 at the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) at Ahmedabad. After joining IPR as a faculty member in 1993, he has contributed to fusion research in various roles: leading a group for physics-design of tokamak (1995-2007), for fusion blanket design (2006-08) and as the Project Director for ITER-India (2007-2019) for execution of in-kind deliveries from India to ITER which is a mega-science, multi-national collaboration project under construction in France. He continued working on various aspects of tokamak plasma, design of fusion reactors at IPR as the head of Fusion Interdisciplinary Science Division until his retirement in 2024. He has published over 40 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and was actively involved in academic activities. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal ‘Nuclear Fusion’ published by the IAEA. He served as the chairperson for the ITER Science and Technology Advisory Committee from 2022 to 2025. He is currently associated with ITER as ITER Fellow. He continues to work on integrated systems code development for next generation tokamak fusion reactors.