H S Mukunda is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, teaching and researching in Combustion and Propulsion of flight vehicles. He has over a hundred publications, including those in journals, international symposia and consultancy reports.

Professor H S Mukunda has been leading the group at the Combustion, Gasification and Propulsion Laboratory (CGPL), Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institution of Science, Bangalore, India. CGPL is involved in frontier work in Aerospace propulsion in addition to innovative research and development in the field of Energy from Bio-resource.

Professor Mukunda has made significant scientific contributions to solid, liquid and ramjet propulsion systems. He has chaired a number of critical reviews of solid and liquid propulsion systems as well as ramjets developed by defense and space establishments. He is currently providing advice on the development of scramjet engines. His fundamental contributions relate to the areas of modeling of combustion in hybrid rocket engines and solid propellants and ingredients; combustion of liquid droplets and instability in liquid rocket engines; of propagation of premixed flames with complex chemistry and diffusion; of reacting flows in nozzles and air inlets in aircraft and missiles; of combustion of wood in gasifiers and in stoves; of heat transfer in nuclear reactor system and large pressure vessels of petrochemical complex. Over the past thirty five years, he has taught post-graduate courses on rocket propulsion, mechanics and thermodynamics of aerospace propulsion, introduction to aerospace vehicles, mathematical techniques in reacting flows and fundamentals of combustion.

He has been a Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences form 1984, Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering from 1994, and Fellow of Aeronautical society of India, 1993. He has been conferred the DRDO Academic Excellence Award 2002 for his valuable contribution in the field of missile propulsion and the Om Prakash Bhasin Award for contributions to Science and Technology in Energy in 1994 and Alumni award of Indian Institute of Science for excellence in Research in Engineering in 1994.

He has held several administrative positions at Indian Institute of Science: Convener, Space Technology Cell (1982-83); Convenor, Joint Advanced Technology Programme (1983-87); Chairman, Centre of Scientific and Industrial Consultancy (1989-91); Chairman, Department of Aerospace Engineering (1995-2000); Chief Executive, Advanced Bioresidue Energy Technologies Society (1996-2003).