Dr. P. Balakrishnan played a key leadership role in forming and growing Aurolab in to a strong self sustaining not for profit social enterprise. He has been the Managing Director of Aurolab right since 1992 and stepped down from the position in 2019. Before joining Aurolab, Dr. Balakrishnan was teaching at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA. Earlier, he worked as a Research and Development staff at Central Manufacturing Research Institute, Bangalore, India. He was a research fellow at Industrial Technology Institute, Ann Arbor, USA, one of the centres of excellence in manufacturing automation research. He obtained his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.