People at the Center for Curiosity
Kushal Sacheti
Founder & President
Kushal Sacheti is a mentor, business advisor, serial entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist driven by an intense intellectual curiosity and a keen desire to aid individuals and organizations arrive at solutions for more civic society.
Mr. Sacheti has over 30 years of business and entrepreneurial experience. He is the Founder and CEO of GalaxyUSA Inc and KeyItems Inc, global business enterprises in the Diamond and Jewelry sector. He
has invested in and offered advisory services to nearly a dozen startups in the United States and India. He was part of the funding of one of India’s earliest venture funds, Erasmic, which is now part of Accel Partners.
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Mr. Sacheti’s philanthropic initiatives include mentoring and advisory roles at several educational institutions and arts and social welfare organizations in India and the United States. He serves on the Leadership Conclave of IIT Gandhinagar and co-founded the Center for Desert Development Studies at BITS Pilani. He is founder and chairman of the Center for Curiosity (CfC) and sponsored the CfC@UPenn initiative on curiosity at the University of Pennsylvania and the establishment of a Curiosity Lab at IIT Gandhinagar. Over the years, he has provided educational and career mentorship and often material support to scores of students.
Achal Mehra
Executive Director
Dr. Achal Mehra most recently was Institute Chair, Professor of Journalism, Dean of Strategic Planning & Special Initiatives, and Coordinator of the Design & Innovation Center at IIT Gandhinagar.
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He holds a PhD in Journalism from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA, and a BTech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He served as Assistant Professor of Journalism and head of the News Editorial Sequence (1983-1985) at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, and
Associate Professor and Director of the Communications Program (1989-2001) at Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Earlier, he headed professional training programs at the Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Center in Singapore (1987-1989) and was an editorial consultant to Xinhua in Beijing China (1985-1986). Prof Mehra is editor and publisher of Little India magazine, the largest circulated Indian publication in the USA, and its online websites, LittleIndia.com and BiggerIndia.com, which have won 21 Ippie Awards from the Independent Press Association of New York. He has published extensively both in academic journals and professional media. He is author/editor of several books on the mass media, including: Free Flow of Information: A New Paradigm; Newspaper Management in the New Multimedia Age ; Press Systems in Asean States and Communication Development and Human Rights in Asia (with Cees J. Hamelink).
Researchers at the Center for Curiosity
DrArjun Shankar
CfC Fellow
Perry Zurn
CfC Fellow
Jordan Litman
CfC Fellow