Convocation 2014
The 46th convocation of IIT Kanpur was held on 18th June 2014 in the Institute's auditorium. For the first time, two separate functions were organized for UG and PG students. Dr. Johannes Georg Bednorz, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics was the Chief Guest in the function for the PG students, and   Dr. K. Radhakrishnan, Chairman, ISRO was the Chief Guest in the function for the UG students. The students   received their   degrees from   Prof. Indranil Manna, Director, IIT Kanpur and   Prof. M. Anandakrishnan, Chairman, Board of Governors presided over the proceedings of the convocation. Degrees were awarded to 1,273 students. The Doctor of Philosophy was awarded to 121 scholars. Many students were also awarded various medals and prizes for their meritorious performances. This year the President's Gold Medal was awarded to Nitish Kumar Srivastava(EE); the Director's Gold Medal was awarded to Vatsal Sharan(EE); the Ratan Swarup Memorial Prize was given to Saumya Kapoor(CHE) and the Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma Medal was given to Gaurangi Gupta(EE). The Gopal Das Bhandari Memorial Distinguished Teacher's Award was awarded to Prof. A. R. Harish, Department of Electrical Engineering.
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Faculty Honours & Awards
A paper by Dr Arun Kumar Shukla, Department of (BSBE) has just appeared in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13430.html. Dr Shukla is the first author of the paper.
A book authored by Prof. D P Mishra, Department of Aerospace, titled "Experimental Combustion: An Introduction" was published by Taylor & Francis recently.
Prof. J.P. Gupta, former Professor in Chemistry and director RGIPT has been chosen for the Distinguished Alumnus Award by School of Engineering, University of Pennsylvania for the year 2014. Professor Gupta did his PhD from University of Pennsylvania.
Prof. Kamal K. Kar, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials science program has been invited to join as editorial board member of the Journal of "Advanced Manufacturing: Polymer & Composites Science" published by Maney Publishing, Leeds, UK.
Dr. Nishchal Verma, Department of Electrical Engineering has been invited to serve as Associate Editor of Transactions of Institute of Measurement and Control, UK.
Dr. Shalabh, Department of Mathematics and Statistics has received the IISA (Indian International Statistical Association) Young Scientist award of 2014.
Dr Sudeep Bhattacharjee, Department of Physics has been invited to serve as an Associate Editor in the journal Frontiers in Physics (http://www.frontiersin.org/), under the section specialty Plasma Physics. Frontiers is a Swiss, Gold open-access academic publisher.
Dr. T Ravichandran, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences has been selected for the prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, 2014 for his research proposal on "Literature, Technology and Environment: Global and Pedagogical Perspectives".
Prof. V. K. Jain, Department of Mechanical Engineering has been appointed as an Associate Editor of the "Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture" being published by SAGE (UK).
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Support from Alumni & Friends
New Faculty Chairs
HAL Chair
Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., Lucknow has sponsored and instituted a Faculty Chair at IIT Kanpur to engage in advanced research and tackle multi-disciplinary problems in aircraft systems technology and its application.
CNR Rao Faculty Award
Mr. Rangarajan Vellamore (BT/ME/1990) has instituted a CNR Rao Faculty Award to be given for excellence in research to a faculty member of any department. The purpose of the award is to provide a way to promote excellence in research with a superior publication or Point of views or Proof of concepts.
New Scholarships and Awards
Ranjan Kumar Memorial Lecture Series
Class of IITK 82 has instituted a lecture series on entrepreneurship in the name of Mr. Ranjan Kumar (BT/ME/86). The task of organizing the lectures will be assigned to SIDBI Innovation & Incubation Center (SIIC) as per the wish of the Batch. The award has been instituted by the batchmates of the Late Mr. Ranjan Kumar in his memory.
Nirmala & Ashok Keshri Scholarship
Mr. Piyush Keshri (BT/EE/2009) has instituted a Nirmala & Ashok Keshri scholarship for a final year B.Tech-Dual Degree student from any department. It will be open to students from all departments but restricted to only 4th Year students of the B.Tech program & 5th year students of the dual degree program. The scholarship will be awarded on a merit-cum-means basis.
Sandeep & Vinita Agarwal Scholarship
Mr. Sandeep Agarwal (BT/ChE/1988) has instituted a Sandeep & Vinita Agarwal Scholarship. It will be given to a first year B.Tech student from any department. The scholarship will be awarded on a merit-cum-means basis.
Swami Sivananda Memorial Scholarship
The Divine Life Society from Garhwal, Uttarakhand has instituted four scholarships. They will be given to four B. Tech students from any department (one each from first year to fourth year). The scholarships will be awarded on a merit-cum-means basis.
Prof. M.M. Hasan Memorial Scholarship
Family and friends of the late Prof. M.M. Hasan have instituted a "M.M. Hasan Memorial Scholarship" to be given to a 1st year B. Tech student of the Electrical Engineering Department. The scholarship will be awarded on a merit-cum-means basis.
Student Innovation Award
SIDBI Innovation & Incubation has created a Student Innovation Award. It is proposed that two annual prizes of Rs 25,000/each and a certificate will be given to two students respectively.
Dr. Prateek Mishra Memorial Gold Medal
Dr. R.N. Mishra, father of the late Dr. Prateek Mishra (BT/EE/2006) has instituted a "Dr.Prateek Mishra Memorial Gold Medal" for the top student of the EE Department in the graduating class. This award will be given during the convocation, starting from the year 2014.
Most Innovative B.Tech. Project
Shri Ajay Mohan Jain (BT/EE/1976) has instituted a onetime cash prize of Rs. 25,000/- to a B.Tech graduating student this year for the most innovative B.Tech project on the birth centenary of his late father Shri C.L. Jain.
Bhagwan Das Sanghi Memorial Gold Medal
The family of the Late Shri Bhagwan Das Sanghi has instituted the "Bhagwan Das Sanghi Memorial Gold Medal" in his memory. It is to be given during the convocation to the best dual-degree student doing MS in Mathematics. Since the first student with MS Mathematics will graduate only in the 2016 convocation, the medal may be given in the 2014 and 2015 convocations to students with the highest CPI in the M Sc (Integrated) program in Mathematics and Scientific Computing.
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New Appointments
New Deans
Prof. A. R. Harish is   the new   Dean of   Students   Affairs (DoSA). Homepage
Prof. Onkar Dikshit   is   the new   Dean of   Infrastructure and Planning (DoIP). Homepage
New Heads
Prof. Rajesh Srivastava is the new Head of the Department of Civil Engineering. Homepage
Prof. Surajit Sinha is the new Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. Homepage
New Associate Deans
IIT Kanpur has taken a new initiative in order to cater to the increased academic and other activities by appointing several Associate Deans.
Prof. Anupam Saxena is the new Associate Dean of DoRA for International Relations. Homepage
Prof. Ashish Dutta is the new Associate Dean of DoIP for Digital Infrastructure.Homepage
Prof. B.V. Phani is the new Associate Dean of DoRD for Innovation and Incubation. Homepage
Prof. Jitendra Bera is the new Associate Dean of DoFA for Faculty Affairs.Homepage
Prof. Pankaj Jain is the new Associate Dean of DoAA for Post Graduate Studies.Homepage
Prof. Samit Ray Chaudhuri is the new Associate Dean of Physical Infrastructure. Homepage
Prof. Shalabh is the new Associate Dean of DoSA for Hall Affairs. Homepage
Prof. Siddhartha Panda is the the new Associate Dean of DoRD for Industrial Collaboration.Homepage
Prof. Suchitra Mathur is the new Associate Dean of DoAA for Under Graduate Studies. Homepage
Prof. Vimal Kumar is the new Associate Dean of DoSA for student Activities. Homepage
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New Faculty Members
Dr. Antara Digar has joined the Department of Civil Engineering. She obtained her PhD from Rice University, USA. Her interests are in air pollution and human health, air quality modelling and uncertainty analysis, atmospheric sensitivity analysis, air quality and climate change, and inverse modeling. Homepage
Dr. Arun K. Shukla has joined the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering. He obtained his PhD from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany. His research interests are in structural biology, cellular signaling, and combinatorial biology. Homepage
Dr. Dipanjan Basu has joined the Department of Electrical Engineering. He obtained his PhD from the University of Texas, USA. His research interests are in simulation of semiconductor devices, electronic band structure calculation and application of the same in device simulation, quantum transport simulation, and multi-scale device modeling. Homepage
Dr. Indra S. Sen has joined the Department of Earth Sciences. He obtained his PhD from Florida International University, USA. His research interest are in radiogenic and stable Isotope geochemistry, non-traditional stable isotopes, petroleum exploration with geochemical tools, anthropocene and environment, and application of isotopes in aerosol source apportionment studies. Homepage
Dr. Mangal Kothari has joined the Department of Aerospace engineering. He obtained his PhD from the University of Leicester. His research interests are in optimal control, nonlinear and adaptive control, flight vehicle guidance and control, state estimation, motion planning and cooperative control. Homepage
Dr. Shikha Prasad joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She obtained her PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. Her research interests are in probabilistic risk and safety analysis (PRA/PSA), radiation transport, nuclear radiation detectors, technical nonproliferation analysis, and small modular reactors. Homepage
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C. N. R. Rao Distinguished Lectures
Prof. Raj Chhabra, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kanpur gave a talk titled "To yield or not to yield: Convection in Visco-plastic Fluids'' on 17th April 2014. In his talk Prof. Chhabra said that based on our day to day experience with air and water, all of us have a general impression that all fluids flow as readily as air and water. There are, however, situations when this simplistic view is grossly inadequate, as there exists a class of structured-materials which yield only when the external applied stress exceeds a threshold value. A visco-plastic material is thus characterized by the existence of a threshold stress below which it behaves like an elastic solid (shows creep-like characteristics) and above which, it flows like a viscous fluid. These substances are also known as soft solids. In this talk, consideration was given to the definition, measurement and interpretation of yield stress in fluid-like systems.
About the Speaker: Prof. R. P. Chhabra is a Professor of chemical engineering at IIT Kanpur. He received his BE, ME & PhD in Chemical Engineering from the erstwhile University of Roorkee (1974), the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (1976) and Monash University, Melbourne (1980) respectively. He also did post doctoral work at the University of Swansea (UK). He joined the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1984. His research interests are Non-newtonian fluid particle systems, Transport properties of liquid metals and molten salts.
About the Donor: Prof. Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao was born on June 30, 1934 in Bangalore. In 1958, he completed his Ph.D. from Purdue University and became a research chemist at the University of California at Berkeley. Returning to India in 1959, he worked as a lecturer at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. From 1963-76, he was a Professor of Chemistry at IITK. During 1984-1994, he was the Director of IISC Bangalore. Prof. Rao has published more than 46 books and 1604 research papers with more than 42,000 total citations. He currently serves as the Head of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. Recently he received the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India. He is a recipient of most of the major scientific awards, and is a member of all major scientific organizations.
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Institute Lectures
Prof. Masahiro Yamashita gave a lecture titled "Frontier of Quantum Molecular Spintronics Based on Single-Molecule Magnets: Toward Green IT devices" on 5th April 2014. He is the Head of the laboratory of coordination chemistry at Tohoku University. He was a visiting Professor at University College London and at the Institute for Molecular Science, Japan. He is a concurrent Professor at Nanjing University (China), Zhejiang University (China) and Cagliari University (Italy) since 2007. Prof. Masahiro Yamashita has received several awards including the Award of Inoue Scientific Foundation in 2002 and The Chemical Society of Japan Award for Creative Work in 2005. He is currently the Chairman of the Asian Conference on Coordination Chemistry, a member of Science Council of Japan, a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Korean Basic Science Institute, an Advisory Board Member of Inorganic
Chemistry (ACS), a member of the Editorial Board of Polyhedron and a Council Member of Tohoku University. He is one of the Associate Editors of Dalton Transactions (RSC). Prof. Masahiro Yamashita's research interests include Multi-Functional Nano-Sciences of Advanced Metal Complexes and Quantum Molecular Spintronics Based on Single-Molecule Magnets. For details of the talk please visit:
Prof. Emmanuel Dormy gave a lecture titled "The origin of the Earth's magnetic field" on 1st April 2014. He is a senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and Professor, EcoleNormaleSupérieure and EcolePolytechnique in Paris. Prof. Emmanuel Dormy is one of the most eminent scientists in dynamo research and computational astrophysics. He has developed the famous dynamo code called ``PARODY''. He is also the coordinator of GdR Dynamo.
Dr. J. Georg Bednorz, IBM Fellow Emeritus gave a lecture titled "High Tc Superconductivity - after Quarter Century a Technology is ready to take off on 17th June 2014. Dr. Bednorz obtained his Master's degree from Münster in 1977 and started work on his PhD at the ETH Zurich under the supervision of HeiniGränicher and K. Alex Müller. In 1982, after obtaining his PhD, Bednorz joined the IBM Research Lab. In 1983, he and K. Alex Müller began a systematic investigation of the electrical properties of ceramic materials formed from transition metal oxides. In 1986, they succeeded in making a superconducting material lanthanum barium copper oxide with a critical temperature significantly higher than the previous record. This discovery soon stimulated a great deal of additional research in superconductivity worldwide and led to the discovery of many other compounds with even higher critical temperatures. In 1987, Bednorz and Müller were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials". In addition to the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1987, Dr. Bednorz has received many other awards and honours some of which include the Marcel-Benoist-Prize, the 13th Fritz London Memorial Award of the University of California, Los Angeles, the Dannie Heinemann Prize of the Academy of Sciences, Göttingen, Germany, the Robert Wichard-Pohl Prize of the German Physical Society, the Otto-Klung Prize of Free University, Berlin, Germany, the Ross Coffin Purdy Award of the American Ceramic Society, the Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize, the APS International Prize for New Materials Research of American Physical Society, and the Minnie Rosen Award of Ross University, New York. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and Honorary Member of the American Ceramic Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Fudan University, Shanghai, China, and the Institute of Physics, Singapore. He has been conferred Dr. Honoriscausa by the University of Regensburg, Germany, the University of Salzburg, Austria, the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland and also by the University of Tbilisi, Georgia.
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Alumni Achievements
Dr. Anil K. Rajvanshi (BT/MT/ME/72/74) the Director of Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) at Phaltan, Maharashtra has been selected to receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award (DAA) of University of Florida (UF), U.S.A.
Mr. Anshuman Acharya (BT/ChE/2000) Bangalore-based writer and theatre artist, won The Hindu-MetroPlus Playwright Award 2014 for his entry, "In the Name of the Bully".
Prof. Anurag Kumar (BT/EE/77) has been appointed as new director of IISc, Bangalore.
Mr. Pawan Kumar Goenka (BT/ME/75) has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Governors at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras for a term of three years.
IIT Kanpur alumnus Prof. Sushil Vachani (BT/ME/73) took over as the new Director of IIM-Bangalore.
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Techkriti 2014
Techkriti, the annual technical and entrepreneurial festival of IIT Kanpur, was organized from 6th to 9th March 2014. It is an annual inter-collegiate Technical and Entrepreneurship festival organized by the students of IIT Kanpur. Techkriti was launched in 1995 with the aim of developing interest and encouraging innovation in technology among students. In twenty one years of its existence, Techkriti has evolved and grown, fulfilling its purpose and becoming one of the most eagerly-awaited college technical as well as entrepreneurship festivals in Asia. Techkriti culminates into a grand four-day festival, attracting footfall of over 25,000 from all over India and even abroad. The festival comprises of a plethora of events from talks by eminent personalities in the field of science, technology and entrepreneurship.A wide range of competitions in diverse fields of Robotics, Computer Sciences and Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Pure Sciences, Civil Engineering, Aerospace and Astronomy are hosted every year in Techkriti. It had competitions, talks, workshops, exhibitions and numerous fun events to enliven the atmosphere and make the festival a grand treat. A number of new initiatives in Techkriti 2014 are Robo Pirates (Aqua-Robotics), Multirotor (Quadrocopter), Richie Rich (Portfolio Optimization), Marketing Villa, Bridge Design Challenge, 28 States, Pratibimb, SocCon, Svagatagami, Urja, Men Let's Talk, Raktarpan, and Claus for a Cause. Techkriti 2014 had talks by Mr. Alvin E. Roth(Nobel Laureate), Walter Lewin(Astrophysicist, MIT), P. Sainath(Rural Affairs Editor, The Hindu Magsaysay Awardee), David J. Griffiths (Author, Introduction to Electrodynamics), GeorgeKourounis(Storm Chaser and Host,Angry Planet) , Jordan Soles (Director of Technology, The Hunger Games and Terminator). Many competitions such as Robogames, Ideas, Techkriti Grand Prix, Tremor, Sky Sparks, Radioactivewere held.In addition there was an array of workshops which provided a platform to have hands-on experience of robotics, IT, electronics, aero-modelling, astronomy, marketing, management and consultancy. Techkriti-2014 also offered a potpourri of fun games and events like World Sudoku Championship, Zorbing, Sumo Wrestling, Paintball and Human Foosball. Apart from the above events, there was also one called 'India Innovators', where some pioneers of innovation like A.Murugunantham (Inventor, Low-Cost Sanitary Pads), BrijKothary (Inventor,Same Language Subtitling) spoke about their remarkable inventions and initiatives.
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