Ashok Kumar Mahapatra
A neurosurgeon who spent four decades at AIIMS Delhi and set up AIIMS Bhubaneswar as its founding director, honoured with the Padma Shri in 2025.
Ashok Kumar Mahapatra is a neurosurgeon who has also built institutions, helping to start a new AIIMS from scratch. In 2025 he was named for the Padma Shri in the field of medicine, from Odisha [1].
Forty years at AIIMS
Mahapatra was born on 29 December 1952 in Puri [2]. He studied medicine at MKCG Medical College in Berhampur and trained in neurosurgery at AIIMS, New Delhi, where he taught from 1983 and later became senior professor and dean of research [2]. He has published around 870 research papers and 16 books [2].
Building institutions
From 2006 to 2009 he was director of the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow, where new centres for telemedicine, liver transplants and trauma care were set up and six new departments started [2].
In 2012 he became the founding director of AIIMS Bhubaneswar. Within four years, it was running courses from MBBS and nursing to super-speciality training [2]. He later served as vice-chancellor of SOA University in Bhubaneswar until 2022 and is now its medical adviser [2].
He also founded the Neurological Surgeons’ Society of India and the Indian Society of Peripheral Nerve Surgery, both in 2011 [2].
Sources
- [1] Padma Awards 2025: list of awardees — Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Accessed 11 October 2026.
- [2] Padma Awards 2025: citation for Ashok Kumar Mahapatra — Padma Awards, Government of India. Accessed 11 October 2026.
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