IISc Awards for Excellence in Teaching 2026

Carol Ann Tomlinson, American educator, author, and speaker, is quoted to have said, “Excellence in education is when we do everything we can to make sure they become everything they can.” Such educators inspire excellence in those they teach. Teaching, then, goes beyond just imparting subject knowledge and methodologies and fulfilment of credit requirements and paper publications; it aims to spark curiosity, ask bigger questions, make connections, go beyond academic expectations, and realise potential skills.

Every year, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) honours its excellent teachers through the IISc Awards for Excellence in Teaching and the Priti Shankar Teaching Awards. This year, the recipients of the former award are Prathosh A P, Sachin R Rondiya, Navaneetha Krishnan Ravichandran, Rishita Das, and Purvi Gupta. The winners of the latter award are Sebabrata Mukherjee and Phani Motamarri. This is the first time in the history of the teaching awards that they have mostly been presented to young faculty members — six of the seven awardees are Assistant Professors and the seventh awardee is an Associate Professor.

The awards were presented to them by Satyam Suwas, Dean, Division of Mechanical Sciences at IISc, on 07 September 2026. A panel discussion among the awardees followed the award ceremony. Empathy was emphasised as one of the important qualities of a teacher. Patience, keeping the students engaged in class, making them feel that their questions are not trivial, not being judgemental, reiterating complex concepts, putting in enough effort in preparation before classes, focussing on the competencies to be taught even more than the course content itself were put forth as other essential qualities.

Answering a question on whether the faculty were experimenting with the way they were teaching courses, the awardees revealed that they reflected on how they were going to teach different topics; they also proceed impromptu with the flow of the interactions happening in class. One of the faculty takes his students on visits to R&D labs, as the requirements of industries are not covered in text books. Another faculty uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to present ideas and to make concepts clearer by prompting AI to break up the concept such that the learning objectives are met.

On the topic of teachers who have influenced the award winners, the qualities of empathy and patience were again highlighted and so was the need to bring back a culture of teacher–student relationship rather than considering college education as a transaction. The students in the audience were advised to walk into an instructor’s office, have a chat, ask questions, and develop a warrior-like attitude in terms of preparing themselves to face a world outside campus.