Athul Dinesh is an NID alumnus and completed his Master of Design (M.Des) in Universal Design in 2020, Master of Technology (M.Tech by Research) in Thermal Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal in 2016, and Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) in Mechanical Engineering from Cochin University of Science and Technology in 2012.
Athul began his professional journey as a Mechanical Engineering Intern at Yazaki Corporation in 2012 and worked as a Researcher at NITK, Surathkal, from 2014 to 2016. He also served as a Mechanical Engineering instructor at the TIME Institute in Cochin in 2016. After education at NID, he worked as a Design Intern with MIPL Global, Malleswaram, Bangalore and as a Designer with Stokr GmBH, Berlin, Germany Remote (2020 - 2021). In September 2021, he joined NID in the Universal Design Department as a Teaching Associate. Later, he joined as an Assistant Professor in the Product Design Department at RV University's School of Design and Innovation in Bengaluru in September 2023. He joined the Interaction Design department of NID on March 4, 2024.
Athul is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, London, United Kingdom (FRSA). He won the Kokuyo Design Award in 2018 for 'Paletteballet,' a children's painting kit developed with Channapatna artisans. His 'Four Walls' project, an app and service design concept advocating accessible home design options, earned the Student Design Award from the Royal Society of Arts, UK, in 2021. His graduation project on 'Design for Play' was featured in the Artsthread Global graduate show sponsored by Gucci in 2021. Athul mentored students for the 'Pupil Design Awards 2021' and contributed to the test and learn group of the Design for Life (DfL) Awards by the Royal Society of Arts, UK. He exhibited his products in The Spiral, Tokyo (2019), Kokuyo International Centre, Kuala Lumpur (2019) and displayed handmade toy collections at Springfair 2022 in Birmingham, UK.
His areas of interest are the design of tangible interfaces, AI-aided services, the design for accessibility and the design for children.