Prabir Sarkar is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Ropar, where he also served as the founding Chairman of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) cell. Before joining IIT Ropar, he was an Associate Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), U.S. Department of Commerce, working on sustainability research.

He earned his PhD in Design Creativity from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, where he also completed his Master of Design in Product Design and Engineering. He began his career at Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) in R&D, working on practical engineering applications.

His research centers on product design, sustainability, creativity, and design methods — developing tools that help designers and companies build novel, functional, and sustainable products. At IIT Ropar, he leads the Design Research Laboratory and the Design Studio Laboratory, with work spanning ecodesign, biomimicry, engineering aesthetics, sustainable machining, and design creativity, and more recently, products for rural applications.

He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India), and has authored 100+ peer-reviewed papers.