Lalit Kumar Das pioneered Industrial Design education at IIT Delhi. He developed a programme that is an excellent blend of design sensitivities and industrial propensities. Very many of his students have distinguished themselves at National & International Design competitions and head design studios in India.

Lalit Das did his B. Tech from IIT Kanpur. Thereafter he did his Masters of Technology in Design Engineering from IIT Delhi and then Master of Art in Industrial Design from the Royal College of Art, London.

Lalit has wide-ranging deep probing interests in design and man’s innate potential to design. He has worked and designed products for the office, home, industry. He has designed for the differently enabled like children with cerebral palsy and others who are orthopedically handicapped. He is the founding editor of Design for All India newsletter. He has also designed educational and research equipment. He has worked with artisans and has conceptualized distant education for artisans under the banner of IGNOU. He is deeply interested in sustainable approach to design and a non parochial non partisan framework for study of design. He has conducted the ergonomic studies for the Design of the Operational Control Centre for Delhi Metro, Bangalore Metro and Hyderabad Metro.

He has many publications to his credit. His doctoral students are in a variety of areas from emotion, sustainability, e-governance, image processing, Frugal Design, etc. He continues to supervise doctoral students at IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, DTU & NID. He has been engaging in the development of the National Design Policy and a member of the National Committee on Design and artisan development. He has widely travelled and has worked at the Industrial Design Centre, I.I.T. Bombay and at the Department of Fine Art, University of Manitoba, Canada.

He has served as a jury for many national level design awards. He has been an Expert Member in the ‘Science & Society’ Programme and Technopreneur Promotion Programme (TePP) of Department of Science & Technology. He has in the past also served local commissioner in two IPR related cases by the Delhi High Court, He was also a member of Program Advisory & Monitoring Committee member of the Government of India’s Design Clinic Scheme for MSME that provides financial & design support to MSME for development of new product design.

He has delivered TEDX talks on enabling innovation, values that shape complex systems, He is deeply interested in Sustainable Design, Circular Economy, and Emergent Systems.

Post retirement, he was teaching at IIIT Jabalpur, School of Planning & Architecture, Lady Irwin College and IIT Delhi as a guest faculty.  He was the guiding light in the setting of the Design Program at Delhi Technological University as an Honorary Faculty from 2018-2023. Currently he is the Distinguished Visiting Professor at IIT Bombay; Advisor & Visiting Professor for School of Design Mahindra University and Honorary Faculty Department of Design, Delhi Technological University (2024-29)

Ceramics is his hobby.