A quarterly newsletter of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur for alumni and friends

Institute

Piyush Srivastava (CSE);

Subhonmesh Bose (EE);

Milestones

President's Gold Medal

Director's Gold Medal

Ratan Swarup Memorial Prize

Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma

Medal

Birth Centenary Function of Prof. P. K. Kelkar (Founder

Director):

Convocation 2009:

IIT-Kanpur participates in creating a Centre of

Engineering Excellence, Penang, Malaysia:

IIT Kanpur is celebrating 2009 - 2010 as Prof. Kelkar's

centenary year, to honour its Founder Director, Prof. Purushottam

Kashinath Kelkar. Prof. Kelkar was a great visionary who made a

distinct contribution to the technical education in the country. He

championed the cause of international collaboration at IIT Kanpur

since its inception. Under his able leadership, the Institute

benefitted from the Kanpur Indo-American Program (KIAP) in the stdays of its infancy. The Inaugural Function was held on 1 June,

th2009 to coincide with his 100 birthday. Prof. M. Ananadakrishnan, Chairman, Board of Governors

presided over the function.

st The 41 convocation of the Institute took place on

th30 May, 2009. Shri Jeet Singh Bindra, President of Chevron Global

Manufacturing, USA and a distinguished alumnus of IIT Kanpur

(BT/CHE/69), graced the occasion as the chief guest. Prof. M.

Anandakrishnan, Chairman, Board of Governors presided over the

proceedings of the convocation. A total of 933 students were awarded

degrees in the convocation (458 undergraduate students and 475

postgraduate students). The was awarded to

was awarded to

was

given to and the

was given to . Details are available at:

The

Government of Malaysia is creating a Centre of Engineering

Excellence at Penang with Universiti Sains Malasia (USM) and

IIT Kanpur as partners .The goal of the Centre is to provide

consultancy services to the multinational companies in the

Penang area. In addition, the centre will organize short term

courses and training programs for the engineers of the local

industry. A Malaysian financial institution, “Khazanah” will

the

the

Varun Khaitan (EE)

T. S. Krishnan (EE)

http://www.iitk.ac.in/doaa/convocation2009/

2009 - 2010/II

Grapevine

provide the initial funding for infrastructure such as the buildings. It will also provide funding for

shared services like equipment and software. To this effect a MoU was signed by Prof. Sanjay G.

Dhande of IIT Kanpur and Prof. Tan Sri Dzulkifi Abdul Razak, Vice-Chancellor, Universiti Sains ndMalasia on 22 August 2009. Present on this occasion was a seven-member Malaysian delegation led

by Prof. Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, and an IITK delegation comprising Prof. Anandkrishnan,

Chairman, Board of Governors, IITK; Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director; Prof R. K. Thareja, Deputy

Director; Prof. Ashok Mittal, Convener; Prof. K. Muralidhar; Prof. Sanjeev Agarwal; Prof. Sanjay Mittal;

Mr. Sanjeev S. Kashalkar, Registrar; Prof. Ajit Chaturvedi; Prof. Deepak Gupta; Prof. Bikramjit Basu

and others. About 20 training and 40 research programmes have been identified, which will be carried

out in various phases. Two courses, namely 'Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits' and 'Radio Frequency

Technology', will be carried out for industry people in the first six months in phase one, for which IITK

faculty will visit Penang.

IITK is

working together with ISRO to launch its first and the country's

lightest nano satellite, Jugnu, by early 2010. The satellite will be

launched into a polar orbit of 700 - 800 km altitude from Sriharikota

using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Jugnu will be 1

foot long, 10 cm wide and will weigh less than 3.5 kg. It will be

equipped with micro imaging and micro electronics systems and

will transmit images to a base station at the IITK campus. It will

also broadcast a beacon signal that HAM operators all over the

globe will be able to pick up. Although the stipulated life time of

the satellite is six months, it is expected to stay in orbit for at least 12

months. The high-resolution pictures and the data obtained from

the satellite will be used for various applications such as drought

monitoring, wasteland management, urban planning and flood-risk management. The nano

satellite is being developed by a team of students led by Shantanu Agarwal (M.Tech, 2009 IITK)

under the supervision of Prof. N. S. Vyas, Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at IIT

Kanpur. Dr. D.V.A. Raghava Murthy, Director, Small System Satellites at ISRO and his team are

providing the necessary support for the success of this mission. According to Prof. Vyas the nano

satellite will carry an indigenously developed imaging system, a GPS system and MEMS based

inertial measuring unit as payloads. A ground station is being built at IIT Kanpur for monitoring

its activities and for data communication.

Dr. D. S. Hur, Chairman and CEO of GS Caltex

Corporation, Korea, has set up a faculty Chair in honour of Mr. Jagjeet S.

Bindra (BT/CHE/69). This Chair is for an outstanding faculty member in the

Department of Chemical Engineering. Mr. Bindra is a distinguished

alumnus of IIT Kanpur and has been very supportive of the institute. He

has recently assumed the responsibility of becoming the Chairman of

the IIT Kanpur Foundation which helps and guides the institute on

various issues.

IITK to launch India's lightest nano satellite, Jugnu:

Jagjeet S. Bindra Chair:

Support from

New Chair

Donors

New Scholarships

and

1981 Batch fund for Counseling Service:

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The

Counseling Service of IITK comprises a group of very

dedicated student volunteers, faculty members and a

team of professional counselors and psychiatrists. Over

the years, as the number of students has increased at IIT

Kanpur, a change has been noticed in the psycho-socio-

economic profile of the students. To cope with the

changed scenario a larger team of professional counselors is required. The support from the 1981

batch for improving and strengthening the activities of the counseling service is very useful for

this purpose. The fund is being used to hire professional counselors, to procure certain

instruments for psychometric testing to help counselors in their work, and to design and conduct

workshops and training sessions for faculty and staff members to enable them to identify and to

handle students in need of counseling.

th ndwas held from 20 – 22 February, 2009.th nd

was held from 20 – 22 February, 2009.th thwas held from 17 – 19 March, 2009.

thwas held on 30 March, 2009.st

was held on 21 August, 2009.

a ex-faculty member of the Department of Electrical Engineering and presently Pro-Vice Chancellor, IGNOU, New Delhi gave a lecture titled “IGNOU-NPTEL

thProficiency Certificate Courses and Professional Diploma Programs” on 26 February, 2009.

of the University of Kansas Centre for remote sensing of ice sheets, gave a lecture titled, “An Overview of Research and Education at the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice

thSheets (CReSIS)” on 13 April, 2009.

of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune gave th

a lecture titled “The role of science fiction in the present age of science” on 24 June, 2009.

of the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore gave a lecture rdtitled “The rise of carbon: Nanotubes and Graphene” on 3 August, 2009.

Prof. V. Chandrasekhar, Head, Department of Chemistry gave a th

lecture on “Single-Molecule Magnets” on the occasion of Science Day on 27 February, 2009.

Dr. G. Rajeswaran, CTO, Moser Baer Group gave a thlecture on 27 March, 2009 titled “Sustainable Technologies: Photovoltaics and organic solid state

lighting”.thDr. A. Ramakrishna gave a lecture on 9 April, 2009

titled “Advanced Construction with Examples of Innovative Design and Construction Technologies”.

Workshops

Institute

Prof. K. R. Srivathsan,

Dr. Siva Prasad Gogineni

Dr. Jayant V. Narlikar

Prof. A. K. Sood

Distinguished

Conferences

Workshop on Condensed Matter Physics

Fourth National Conference “CivERE 2009”

Third Hackers workshop “HACK.in 2009”

A cyber conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

A Workshop on “A Perspective of International Collaboration”

Lecture Series

Lecture Series

Prof. C. N. R. Rao Lecture Series:

E. C. Subbarao Distinguished Lecture Series:

Dr. Devendra Shukla Distinguished Lecture:

For details on workshops / conferences / lecture series please visit: http://www.iitk.ac.in/drpg/newsmag.htm

New

Prof. Lilavati Krishnan,

Prof. Amalendu Chandra,

Prof. Kalyanmoy Deb,

New

Faculty Honours

Prof. Kripa Shanker,

Prof. P. Shunmugraj,

Heads

Faculty

Dr. Md. Jaleel Akhtar,

Dr. Prashant B. Bagad,

Dr. Sameer Laxman Chavan,

Dr. Bahniman Ghosh,

Dr. Aditya K. Jagannatham,

Dr. Vimal Kumar,

Dr. Naren Naik,

Dr. Priya Ranjan,

Dr. Vineet Sahu,

Dr. Raghvendra Singh,

Dr. Nishchal K. Verma,

Dr. Vivek Verma,

Awards

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has been appointed Head, Department of Humanities and Social

Sciences from May, 2009.

Department of Chemistry has been appointed Head,

Computer Centre from August, 2009

Department of Mechanical Engineering has been appointed Head,

Centre for Development of Technical Education (CDTE) from September, 2009.

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical

Engineering, Ph.D from Madeburg, Germany.

Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities

and Social Sciences, Ph.D from University of Southampton, USA.

Assistant Professor, Department of

Mathematics and Statistics, Ph.D from University of Pune, India.

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical

Engineering, Ph.D from University of Texas, Austin, USA.

Assistant Professor, Department of

Electrical Engineering, Ph.D from University of California, San Diego,

USA.

Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and

Social Sciences, Ph.D fromU niversity of California, Irvine, USA.

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical

Engineering, Ph.D from IISc Bangalore, India.

Department of Electrical

Engineering, Ph.D from University of Maryland, College Park, USA.

Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and

Social Sciences, Ph.D from University of Hyderabad, India.

Department of Chemical

Engineering, Ph.D from State University of New York, Buffalo, USA.

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical

Engineering, Ph.D from IIT Delhi, India.

Assistant Professor, Department of Materials and

Metallurgical Engineering, Ph.D from Pennsylvania State University,

USA.

Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, has

been appointed Vice-Chancellor of Uttar Pradesh Technical University from

August, 2009.

Department of Mathematics and Statistics was awarded the th

Distinguished Teacher Award 2009, on Teachers’ Day, 5 September, 2009 .

Assistant Professor,

Assistant Professor,

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Published by: Office of the Dean, Resource Planning & Generation, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208 016, IndiaPhone: + 91-512-259 7635/ 7542 Fax: +91-512- 259 0353 Email – drpg@iitk.ac.in, arrpg@iitk.ac.in