Ajit Pal is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering, University of Waikato (Tauranga Campus), New Zealand and teaches into the common first year papers of the engineering program.

Ajit Pal’s research is focused on powder metallurgy of light metals. He is an expert in thermomechanical powder processing technologies (extrusion & forging), advanced material characterization, mechanical performance and failure analysis of light metals (mainly titanium alloys), metal matrix composites, sandwich-structured composites and ceramic materials. Ajit Pal is a member of the Waikato Centre for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (WaiCAMM) and the Robotics, Automation and Sensing (WaiRAS). He is also performing collaborative research with scholars from the United Kingdom, India and China. Ajit Pal is currently in the process of starting new interdisciplinary research focusing on advanced design and additive manufacturing of horticultural robotic gripper technologies. He has successful secured 2022 Smart Ideas research funding (NZD 1 million) from MBIE for the project entitled: Lightweight compliant mechanism robotic grippers for fruit harvesting.

Ajit Pal completed a Bachelor of Engineering (majoring in mechanical engineering) in 2011 and a PhD degree in Materials Processing Engineering in 2016 at the University of Waikato. His thesis examined the effects of microstructure and residual impurities on the toughness and fracture behaviour of titanium alloys produced through thermo-mechanical powder metallurgy processing, and the research outcomes have contributed toward $14.5 million worth “Titanium Technologies New Zealand (TiTeNZ)” project. After completing his PhD Ajit Pal was appointed as a Teaching Fellow at the Hebei University of Science and Technology in China in collaboration with the School of Engineering, University of Waikato up until 2019.