Throughout the Golden Jubilee year 2009-2010 several national and international conferences were held in IITK where the topics ranged from fabrionics, energy, environment, material sciences to entrepreneurship and technology innovation. Many well-known scholars from around the world were invited to the campus to discuss and share the latest work in their respective fields.

The world and especially India is facing an acute problem of water security. There are several gaps in the available technologies and policies related to water management which include both quantity and quality issues. For minimizing these gaps, issues related to water management must be addressed together by scientists, technologists, policy makers, implementers, and the society at large. The conference was an effort to foster coordination amongst the various stakeholders and to bring together experts of national and international repute in the field to share their knowledge and experience on the technological options, policy guidelines and implementing mechanisms for water harvesting, storage and conservation.

The main objectives of this conference were to: (i) assess the significance of water harvesting, storage and conservation to meet the international water stipulate, (ii) assess challenges related to water harvesting, storage and conservation technologies, and (iii) engage stakeholders in issue-oriented discussion, to share experience and agree on a common plan of action.

The unique features of this conference were: technical sessions with only invited papers from eminent persons in the field; working group meetings in three parallel sessions each day of the conference to deliberate on policy, technology and planning and implementation issues; plenary session on each day to identify gaps, suggest measures and come up with recommendations on policy, technology and planning and implementation for rainwater harvesting, storage and conservation; posters on all contributed papers; two special events on (i) Pollution Abatement in Ganga Basin: Bioremediation Potential and Challenges and (ii) Sanitation Technologies; Exhibition and Model Competition for school children.

More than 250 participants and over 25 eminent people as invited speakers from all over the world attended the conference. The 3-day conference successfully provided a platform for discussion and interaction on various issues of water harvesting, storage and conservation and paved the way for possible future collaborations amongst the participants from all over the world. The overwhelming response received for organization and participation in the conference is a revelation of the concern for water security.

The conference was supported by The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF); The State Water Resources Agency (SWaRA), Govt. of U.P.; Project Activity Core Team (PACT), Uttar Pradesh Water Sector Restructuring Project (UPWSRP), Department of Irrigation, Govt. of U.P.; World Wide Fund for Nature, India (WWF-India) and its Living Ganga Program; Water Aid-India; Arghyam; Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Govt. of India; Department of Drinking Water and Supply (DDWS), Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. of India; Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB). The conference was covered by India Water Portal and Asian Water as media partners along with local print and electronic media.

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The National Organic Symposium Trust (NOST) is a non-profit organization established in 1983 for promoting organic chemistry through scientific interactions in conferences/seminars. Since then, it has been involved in such activities where established organic chemists in both India and abroad get a platform to share their research work. In 2003, the board of trustees of the NOST decided to have a separate forum for research scholars and junior scientists for scientific deliberations and interactions, which later became known as Junior National Organic Symposium Trust (J-NOST) Meet. Four such conferences have been successfully organized till now.

The 5th J-NOST conference was held at IIT Kanpur. The topics covered all aspects of organic chemistry ranging from the synthetic aspects to the development of anti-malarial drugs, glycosidase inhibitors and natural products. There were 112 participants from 61 different institutions (eight from the UK). Sixty-one of them gave oral presentations while twenty-six gave poster presentations.

This conference also has a tradition of inviting students from the UK. Eight students came from eight different universities of the UK for oral presentations. There were insightful talks by many eminent scholars like Prof. Ray C. F. Jones of Loughborough University, UK, who spoke on ‘What is an ethical chemist?’

A special event was organized during J-NOST5 where twelve awards for outstanding thesis were presented to deserving Indian students by Eli-Lilly, a global pharmaceutical company based in the USA. Twenty students received the Eli-Lilly awards, two of them from IIT Kanpur- Ms. Monika Raj and Mr. K. B. Joshi.

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An Indo-US conference on Fabrionics was organized to bring together scientists from various areas such as nanoscience and technology, manufacturing engineering, micro-fabrication technology, biology and energy systems. A key strength of the meeting was the scientific presentations given by the various scientists from mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, physics and biology.

The conference focused on fabrication, structures and properties on micro-nano scales: soft materials, self-assembly, self-organization and novel functionalities. The basic research themes were:

1. Fabrication on small scale: From top down to self assembly
2. Synthesis and fabrication of functional materials and interfaces
3. Mechanics on small scale during self assembly and small scale fabrication processes.
4. Fabrication of Bioplatforms: MEMS/ NEMS/ Microfluidics
5. Materials and devices for energy and environment

Numerous presentations on nanoscience and technology highlighted the diverse areas of biosensors, fuel cells, solid-state lighting, and drug delivery research and opened up new avenues of exploration. There were talks on the changing landscape of manufacturing, desktop sized factories and miniaturization. This trend would redistribute manufacturing capability from a capital and energy intensive focus in the hands of a few to a low cost energy efficient enabling technology in the hands of the many. Presentation on BioMEMS showed how miniaturization science can be used to solve chemical and biological problems with an emphasis on molecular biology and energy, problems which include medical diagnostics, sensor technology, micro-battery development, and novel drug delivery systems among others. Some talks emphasized the importance of the development of Microfluidic Compact Discs, Carbon-MEMS devices and Electroactive Polymer substrates.

The conference helped to explore the cutting-edge of micro/nano fabrication and functions, which is a highly interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary area with equal interest across many departments such as Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, Materials Science, Biosciences, Chemistry, Physics, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering.

Amidst all the intellectual discussions and talks, a cultural program was organized on the 10th and 11th of December where the participants were treated to Astaad Deboo’s dynamism, a man with a highly energetic and individualistic dance style. He gave two performances – Breaking Boundaries and Rhythm Divine – with his troupe. For further details of this program please refer to the Cultural Events section.

The conference was supported by the IIT Kanpur Golden Jubilee fund, the Indo-US Center for Research Excellence in Fabrionics (funded by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, Delhi) and the National Science Foundation, USA.

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Turbulence is one of the unsolved problems in classical physics. Recent powerful computer simulations and sophisticated experiments have made this field very exciting. To discuss the recent exciting developments in turbulence, an International Conference was organized which saw enthusiastic participation from the turbulence community. Leading national and international scientists in the area of turbulence participated in the conference.

The focus of the conference was on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), Liquid Metals, and Dynamo. There were also sessions on convective instabilities and turbulence instabilities, fluid turbulence, etc. Altogether there were 11 technical sessions on topics such as MHD, liquid metal, dynamo, astrophysical turbulence, fluid turbulence instabilities, and computational fluid dynamics. All the sessions started with general talks in the subfields. The participants also discussed future collaborations.

There were 32 speakers with 9 international and 23 national scientists and engineers. Among the 23 Indian speakers, 10 were from IIT Kanpur. 25 students registered for the conference with 15 of them from IIT Kanpur. Five participants presented posters. The pdf versions of the talks have been uploaded at the website: http://home.iitk.ac.in/~mkv/Conf/Talks.html.

The conference was funded by the Golden Jubilee Committee of IIT Kanpur, the Physics Department of IIT Kanpur, the National Fusion Program, and the Department of Atomic Energy under the BRNS scheme.

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The global energy concerns of depleting fossil fuels and climate change have put forward great challenges for researchers in not only engineering sciences but also in economics and social sciences. There is an urgent need to evaluate the research and development work being done in the area of energy and to set guidelines for the future. The ‘Energy Conclave 2010’ provided an excellent platform for people to get to know and interact with each other, to exchange new ideas, discuss new developments and finally to look at the challenges ahead for a sustainable future.

The conclave lasted 8 days, starting 8th January. For each day a specific focus area in a specific energy option was assigned and there were several talks and discussions pertaining to that area. Here are the details of the events held during the conclave.

8th January

The theme for day 1 was ‘New Paradigms in Energy Policy and Regulation’. The growth of the Indian economy in the near future requires substantial growth in energy supply. There is a need to enhance investment, to improve efficiency along the supply chain of energy and to bring in economic efficiency in the sector. Policy and regulatory framework plays a key role in achieving these objectives. The existing and emerging challenges in the Indian energy sector need local solutions with insights from global experience. The regulatory institutions and policy makers have a key role to play in this direction.

With the aim of gaining insight into key issues of policy and regulation across power, coal, oil & gas, renewable energy and climate change, the following topics were covered:

1. A multi-sector Regulator
2. Competition and choice in electricity
3. Towards a Framework for Pricing in the Energy Sector
4. A Market for Energy Efficiency in India
5. Climate and India’s Energy Sector
6. Renewable Energy: A New Regulatory Approach
7. New Paradigms for Regulating Power Sector
Also, there were two Roundtables – 1) Multi-Sector Regulator and 2) India and Climate Change.

9th January

The theme of day 2 was ‘Civilian Nuclear Energy’. At the present time Indian civilian nuclear energy planning involves accelerated growth of nuclear power in the next 20 years. This implies the creation of a massive amount of nuclear infrastructure in a very short time. Safety and health aspects are crucial from a social point of view and they formed the focus of this one-day workshop. Nuclear engineering education and training is also a vital component of this exercise and universities play a very important role in this area. A panel discussion on emerging nuclear engineering programs in Indian universities was held in the afternoon session.

10th – 12th January

‘Advances in Combustion and Transportation’ formed the theme of the discussions during the next three days of the conclave. Combustion as a science has developed considerably over the last few decades and has helped in improving the efficiencies of automobile engines, gas turbines, rocket engines and of industrial processes like power generation etc. However, looking at the rapidly increasing energy demand, the limited supply of fossil fuels and the increased concern over global warming due to emissions, a lot more needs to be done to further improve system efficiencies, to identify/invent alternative sources of energy, and to develop reusable and cleaner technologies.

This workshop discussed the emerging new technologies of combustion modeling, diagnostics and control as well as the advances in renewable energy and clean combustion technologies. It brought together the contributions of active researchers from academia, industry and research institutions. The directions of future research were identified and that will greatly help the combustion community.

13th January

The theme for the sixth day was ‘Photovoltaic Science and Technology’. It is well known that photovoltaic or solar cells have the potential of providing clean and green energy. The only impediment in its adoption by the common man is its high price. The price of the technology can be brought down by new and cheaper materials, processes and better solar cell structures and hence, the need for research and development.

The Institute had also earlier organized a National Conference on the Emerging Trends in the Photovoltaic Energy Generation and Utilization (NCETPEGU) in March 2008. It was inaugurated by Mr. V. Subramanian, then Secretary MNRE. Besides Indian participants, there was large participation of experts in PV from outside India. The indigenous Photovoltaic industries too, had participated enthusiastically and brought their products in an exhibition. A decision had been made to set up a "Solar Energy Research Enclave". The symposium had brought together academicians, scientists and technologists working in universities, research institutes and industries on one platform to share their experiences, knowledge and expertise and move forward in the right direction.

14th January

The next day’s theme was ‘Hydrogen & Energy Storage’. The symposium aimed to elucidate the chemical and electrochemical approaches in addressing the energy challenge. The focus was on the fundamental science and engineering issues in generating and processing appropriate fuels (like hydrogen, methanol and solid-state materials for battery applications) and on the electrochemical means of converting the fuels into more usable forms.

15th January

The final day of the conclave was intended to identify specific areas of research which need immediate attention to handle the challenges of Smart Energy Delivery Systems (SEDS). The concept needs to be evolved organically from within the country, to be relevant to the prevalent market practices and social realities. In this workshop, eminent speakers were invited to address specific issues on the technological aspects of systems operation, control and intelligent grid concepts, keeping in view that a significant share of distributed generation uses renewable sources. The workshop culminated in a panel discussion to identify the specific areas of research which will help develop the necessary infrastructure, and the technical knowledge base needed for developing a smart delivery mechanism for electrical energy.

The 8-day conclave was a very successful event and saw the participation of more than 150 speakers of international repute and approximately 500 students, professionals and practising engineers, industry people, scientists working in the field of energy, social scientists and economists.
The conclave organizers were successful in making this event a “zero cost event” for the Institute and the Golden Jubilee Committee. Also, this was the first time that the Institute organized such a big event spread over so many days.

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Entrepreneurship and innovation are critical to wealth creation in any economy. They are important for geo-political economy in that they foster the reduction of income disparity at national and global levels. Technology is often a primary driver for both entrepreneurship and innovation. In the current global context technology innovation and management are inherently linked to the fostering and sustaining of competitive advantage. With the aim of threading together these separate themes an Annual Global Conference on Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovation was organized at IITK. The intention was to highlight the criticality of developing entrepreneurial talent in boosting technology innovation.

There were 160 participants from India, Africa, Italy and the US. The general plan of each day’s session for the three days of the conference was aimed at bringing together the diverse perspectives of the various stakeholders in entrepreneurship and technology innovation. There was one keynote address each day from the three critical stake holders i.e. the government, the non-governmental organizations and the financial institutions, followed by four research presentations, two in the morning and two in the afternoon session. This was interspersed with panel discussions by industry experts in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship and finance. Each panel comprised 4 - 6 candidates. The featured topics were – Commercializing emerging technology, Entrepreneurship education, Financing new ventures and Corporate Entrepreneurship. Participants in panel discussions comprised people with considerable experience who shared their views and perspectives and provided a critical analysis of the success and failure of specific models in the above four areas. Each day’s session ended with a ten-minute presentation by entrepreneurs sharing their experiences and around 10 entrepreneurs from diverse areas participated. Addresses of the keynote speakers provided a macro perspective of the ways of nurturing entrepreneurial talent and identifying the key drivers for creating and sustaining a knowledge economy.

There was an assortment of good quality research papers and working papers on innovation and entrepreneurship. These papers were made available in the form of CD-ROM and a conference proceeding was also published to disseminate them to a wider audience.

The participants had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with entrepreneurs, corporate executives from India and academicians from across the world. The conference provided opportunities for collaborative research and also highlighted the need of promoting research in the field. This was to be achieved through a capacity building exercise by conducting research workshops and provide funding for research in specific areas.

To this end, the Asian Entrepreneurship Association (AEA), a global forum, has been established with IIT Kanpur (India), NSTEDB, DIT, RPI (US), McMaster University (Canada), National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), IIMA, IIMB, ISB, IITB, VIT, Montclair university (US), ICICI Knowledge park and Università Politecnicadelle Marche as the founding members to focus on entrepreneurship in the Asian context with a global focus. A proposal for funding has been developed and put forward to DST and other funding agencies. AGCETI is currently an annual event and AGCETI 2011 is proposed to be hosted at IIT Bombay during the first week of December, 2011. An announcement regarding the program for encouraging research in entrepreneurship is expected during AGCETI 2011 subject to the receipt of funding commitment from the funding agencies.

The conference was generously funded by IIT Kanpur, the Indo US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), the Department of Information Technology (DIT), SIDBI Ventures, NSTEDB (National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board), the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), the Syndicate Bank, Sun Startup essentials, D. Ganguly and Associates and the Intel Corporation.

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Between 30th January and 8th February 2010 two international mega-events were organized at IIT Kanpur. The ICTS program titled ‘Non – equilibrium statistical physics (NESP)’, fully sponsored by the newly established International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) of TIFR, was held from 30th January to 8th February 2010.

The other parallel conference from 4th to 8th February titled ‘Interaction, Instability, Transport and Kinetics: Glassiness and Jamming’ was sponsored jointly by IIT Kanpur and the Centre of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (CAMCS) of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata.

Prof. Debashish Chowdhary (IIT Kanpur) chaired both events, the co-chairs being Prof. Bikas K. Charabarti (SINP, Kolkata) and Prof. Arun K. Grover (TIFR, Mumbai). The conveners were Dr. Amit Dutta and Dr. Satyajit Banerjee from the Department of Physics, IIT Kanpur. The chief patron was Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, IIT Kanpur and the co-patrons were Prof. R. K. Thareja, Deputy Director, IIT Kanpur; Prof. K. Muralidhar, DORD, IIT Kanpur; Prof. Sanjeev K. Aggarwal, DRPG, IIT Kanpur; Prof. Manindra Agrawal, Chairman, Golden Jubilee Committee, IIT Kanpur; and Prof. Y. N. Mohapatra, Head, Physics Department, IIT Kanpur. Prof. T. V. Ramakrishnan, FRS (IISc. Bangalore/BHU and ex-Prof. IITK) was the chief advisor of the organizing committee.

The events hosted more than 80 invited speakers and about 60 Ph.D. students in addition to several post-docs and young faculty members from India and abroad. The galaxy of esteemed speakers included a Nobel Laureate, elected members of various prestigious international and national academies, winners of important national and international awards along with past and present presidents of the science academies and several directors of scientific institutes in India and abroad.

Prof. Anthony J. Leggett, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, delivered two lectures. His first lecture was an expanded version of his Nobel Lecture delivered at Stockholm. His second lecture in this conference was announced as an Institute Lecture, which was chaired by Prof. K. Muralidhar (the then Dean R&D, IIT Kanpur) on behalf of the Institute administration.

There were about 110 lectures delivered during the two mega-events. Two abstracts books were brought out by the conference organizers, covering the lectures presented in the NESP IITK: GJ conference. The 1-hr long lectures had a mix of colloquium level talks and overviews of the frontier areas. There were also half-an-hour long presentations which addressed specific issues at the forefront of research in Condensed Matter Physics, Non-equilibrium aspects of Classical Statistical Mechanics, Quantum Phase Transitions, Biological Physics and Computer Science.

The general theme of these events covered two aspects: on the one hand, there were reports of investigations looking at the effects of interactions among the constituents of a macroscopic system and imposition of external driving forces which destabilizes the existing order in a system, while on the other hand, there were reports of studies exploring interactions in driven systems affecting the transport properties and causing slow (glassy) relaxation and jamming. The variety of systems investigated under this general theme included noisy transport of proteins in living cells, Darwinian evolution in eco-systems and emergence of new species, extremely slow processes in soft and glassy materials, earthquakes and stock market, superconductivity and superfluidity under extreme conditions and non-equilibrium effects in new superconductors, magnetic materials, graphene and nanostructured material, to name a few.

The aim was to provide a multidisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas between theorists and experimentalists on the interplay of interaction, instability, transport and glassy kinetics in a diverse variety of systems encountered in nature. Due to the breadth of the scope of the events, faculty members and students belonging to different departments in IIT Kanpur were able to actively participate in them.

Also, in a brief ceremony one evening, Prof. Jainendra K. Jain (MSc 2 years/Physics /1981) was felicitated with the Distinguished Alumnus award. Dr. Jain is currently the Erwin K. Mueller Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania University, USA. He also delivered an invited lecture at NESP on his pioneering work on the composite Fermion approach to fractional quantum Hall effect.

The closing remarks were made by Prof. Bikas K. Chakrabarti (SINP), Prof. Deepak Dhar (TIFR, Mumbai) and Prof. G. Baskaran (Institute of Mathematical Science, Chennai), who presented a summary of the main findings and the new developments in the field of non-equilibrium statistical physics.

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In recent years, the emphasis on understanding the exogenic and endogenic processes operating on Earth has shifted towards adopting a more holistic view of the Earth as a ‘system’ comprising the lithosphere, the biosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. The most important example of this ‘integrated’ system is the Earth’s climate system, which requires the understanding of the atmosphere, ocean and land systems, and their interactions within and with societies and technologies. The issue of global climate change and its impact on socio-economic and natural resources has become a major concern in all parts of the world.

We must discover, develop and broadly apply physical and institutional solutions for collective survival. IIT Kanpur, therefore, planned to initiate a coordinated program on ‘Earth Systems and Climate Change Research’. The primary goal of this initiative would be to develop infrastructure facilities for climate research and a coherent, multi-disciplinary research group and manpower to take up large projects of national and social relevance. A National Conclave on Climate Change Research was held at IIT Kanpur on 13th March 2010 to debate the implications of climate change on the earth’s resources.

The chief guest for the conclave was Prof. V. K. Gaur, a distinguished scientist at CMMACS Bangalore. There were insightful talks by faculty members from IITK as well as other institutions including Profs. Rajiv Sinha, Rajesh Srivastava, Tarun Gupta, D. Paul (all from IITK), S. K. Tandon, Devesh Sinha, Vikrant Jain (all from Delhi University), K. Ashok (IITM Pune), P. P. Muzumdar (IISc Bangalore). K. Ramesh (MOES) and many others. Several crucial issues were highlighted, such as water resource management and river future, the need for generation of high resolution proxy records, the use of oceanic records to unravel the paleoclimatic fluctuations over long time scales and the need to link this data with the continental records. Another important aspect of impact, the economics and policy of climate change research, was presented by Dr. Praveen Kulshreshtha. While Dr. D. Paul described his forthcoming project, Prof. Tarun Gupta and Prof. M. K. Verma spoke about the modeling capabilities available at IIT Kanpur and the proposed research for studying climate change. Another highly promising concept of green design and consumption in the context of climate change was shared by Prof. Jayanta Chatterjee (IITK). The main point of this talk was the issue of resource productivity in a variety of connotations.

The final session of the conclave, coordinated by Prof. V. K. Gaur, focused on identifying the outstanding research issues to address climate change education and research.

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As we rise to the challenge of making a healthier society, the ancillary impact of the economic growth in the country will become more widespread. We must not forget the importance of a good and sustainable environment even as we make economic advancements. Keeping in view the above agenda the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering (CESE) at IIT Kanpur organized an international conference with experts engaged in public health research in the areas of medicine, engineering and ecology.

The conference brought together experts from these fields to generate ideas for medicine, environmental technologies, biological sciences and related research development. This synergy would multiply the potential benefits for better human health. This was accomplished via invited presentations and round table discussions.

The themes for the conference were:

• Air quality, Occupational Environment and Health
• Water, Hazardous pollutants and Health
• Environment-related Diseases, Treatment and Prevention
• Genomics and Health, Remediation Technologies
• Role of Information Technology

The conference provided a unique opportunity for international participants to explore and contribute towards environmentally induced health issues, common in developing countries, often due to high levels of environmental pollution. The need for low-cost effective technology is high on the agenda of any society and the conference participants came together to develop solutions. There were several presentations on new and current technologies.

The issue of emerging contaminants, their assessment, fate processes and health impacts are something that experts are grappling with all over the world. Some presentations focused on these contaminants and sought ways of handling them. There were several talks and poster presentations on environmental monitoring and modeling that provided insightful assessments and diagnostics for future prediction and forewarning. The student posters (about 25 in number) also clearly highlighted the issues of monitoring, assessment and technology development.

This conference also provided an opportunity for the students to share their ideas with some of the leading experts in the profession.

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ICARUS is the Indian Conference for Academic Research by Undergraduate Students. It is the first Indian conference that aims to capture the original work of undergraduate students from all disciplines of science and engineering. It showcases and rewards the original research carried out by undergraduates from across the nation.

The first ICARUS 2010 was hosted by IIT Kanpur. It was conducted with an Open Theme. The four primary events of the conference were – Sanshleshan, Adbhut, Joojho and Margdarshan. More than 200 students from some of the best colleges of the country participated in the conference.

Sanshleshan (Oral Paper Presentation)

A total of 27 papers were presented from different fields of engineering and sciences. The presentations were judged by IITK faculty.

Adbhut (Poster Presentation Session)

The idea behind Adbhut was to promote the hands-on-minds-on research in our education system. Only those posters were showcased which showed a substantial amount of application based thought process and implementation. In all, there were 7 posters. Each poster dealt with an interesting and a challenging theme. The themes included ways for visually challenged people to sense the environment better, inculcating artificial intelligence in robots, overcoming traffic congestion, conservation of water using guitar strings, producing light energy by cheap infrared sensors, use of a protein for storing memory by utilizing the structural changes that occur upon exposure to light, and problems women have in handling cell phones which are usually kept in purses.

Joojho (Brainstorming Session)

A problem that has been puzzling the industry for a while was put across to a chosen group of students who were selected to include a varied but coherent skill set. The problem was:

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is estimated to be the fastest growing waste stream, amounting to 5% of the total municipal solid waste (MSW) and growing at three times the rate of the total MSW stream. WEEE offers numerous attractive reclamation opportunities but safe and efficient separation of all of the components remains a challenge. In many of the present dismantling practices used to reclaim precious metals there is significant risk of exposure to toxic materials. More advanced and automated methods of disassembly and reclaim are indeed being developed but are not mature. Cost effective and environmentally clean technologies developed to manage WEEE will likely enjoy steady growth.
The purpose of the session was to find a solution for this problem. Though they couldn’t find a satisfactory solution, working on an industrial problem was a great experience for them.

Margdarshan (Lecture Series)

In this session, there were talks by eminent personalities in science and technology.

Dr. R. Chidambaram, the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and former Director of BARC, emphasized the need of motivation to make India a ‘Developed country’ in the fullest sense of the term and a ‘Global Innovation Leader’. His message to the students was ‘your work should be directed towards relevance or excellence, preferably both’.

Dr. K. L. Chopra, Former Director, IIT Kharagpur, and President, Society for Scientific Values, spoke at length about the emergence of many ethical issues (relating to administration, practice and use of science) and the significant changes that the last five decades have seen in the structure and practice of science.

Prof. Vijay Singh, National Coordinator, Science Olympiads at the HBCSE, Mumbai, spoke about how the NIUS (National Initiative for undergraduates in Science) program of HBCSE (TIFR) is involved in initiating and guiding students over an extended period for proto-research, preparing and editing lecture notes, and promoting undergraduate research.

Dr. Roddam Narasimha, India’s foremost Aerospace scientist and a world renowned fluid dynamicist, spoke on ‘Evolution of Science and Engineering Education in India and its future’. He highlighted the importance of introductory courses in the academic curriculum. He also enumerated the contributions of institutes like the IITs and IISc to the research scenario in India.

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The Department of Chemistry, IIT Kanpur organized a conference titled ‘Molecules, Supramolecules and Materials’ in which nearly 60 researchers including 4 from abroad, participated. A large contingent of faculty and students from IITK also attended the conference.

There were 30 plenary and invited lectures which covered almost all areas of Chemistry. Some of the notable speakers included:

1. Dr. Sivaram from NCL Pune, gave the plenary lecture on controlled synthesis of functional polymers.
2. Prof. Biman Bagchi from IISc Bangalore gave the first invited talk of the academic program on the structure and dynamics of water in the hydration layer around protein and DNA.
3. Prof. Pierre Dixneuef from the University of Rennes spoke on the catalytic activation and functionalization of inert C-H bond.
4. Prof. Mark E. Tuckerman from New York University, USA delivered a lecture on hybrid organic/semiconductor structures.
5. Prof. E. Arunan from IISc Bangalore, initiated a discussion on the definition of hydrogen bond.
6. Prof. T. K. Chakravarty from CDRI, Lucknow discussed the challenges in drug discovery.
7. Prof. U. Maitra from IISc, Bangalore, presented recent work on the soft materials designed from bile acid analogous.
8. Prof. K. Bhattacharya from IACS, Kolkata, discussed the recent advances in femtosecond spectroscopy.

There were many other invited lectures which dealt with front-line research on chemical problems cutting across boundaries of physics, biology and materials science. There was also an extended poster session in the evening of 2nd October where researchers from both IITK and outside presented their work. Several contemporary topics like the synthetic aspects of molecules, weak interaction, self-assembly, functional materials, development of theoretical methodologies and computational applications for different physical and chemical problems and metal-organic chemistry were discussed.

A large number of participants were alumni of the department and for them it was also a time for renewal and reminiscence. In addition to the academic events, a morning walk was organized on 2nd October followed by breakfast at the student mess in Hall-4.

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IIT Kanpur has been organizing Research Challenges (REACH) symposia with the idea of developing interdisciplinary research thinking and providing impetus to research activity being carried out in frontier areas in this institute. In keeping with the basic objectives of the symposium four divergent themes were covered.

The first theme ‘High Performance Computing: Applications in Science and Engineering’ was coordinated by Profs. A. Chandra and K. Deb. The relevance of this theme not only emerges from its contemporary nature but also because of the fact that a large High Performance Computation facility is being set up at IIT Kanpur. Also many researchers cutting across departments investigate problems using High Performance Computation as the tool. There were four internal speakers and two external speakers. This session was chaired by Prof. G. Biswas. After an overview by Prof. K. Deb the following talks were given:

1. ‘Using HPC for understanding Fluid Flows’ by Prof. Sanjay Mittal, IITK.
2. ‘An Applications Perspective of High-Performance Computing’ by Dr. S. Sherlekar, INTEL, Bangalore.
3. ‘From Sequence Analysis to Simulations: Applications of High-Performance Computing in Modern Biology’ by Prof. R. Sankararamakrishnan, IITK.
4. ‘Automatic Parallelization of Programs’ by Prof. Sanjeev K. Aggarwal, IITK.
5. ‘Will HPC ever meet the demands of Weather and Climate Forecasting?’ by Dr. P. Goswami, C-MMACS, NAL, Bangalore.
6. ‘Molecular Simulations and HPC@IITK’ by Prof. A. Chandra, IITK.

The second theme dealt with ‘Innovation and Design’ which is highly relevant in technical education. This theme was coordinated by Profs. B. V. Phani, J. Chatterjee and D. Gupta. The theme attracted speakers both from academia and the industry. The two IITK alumni who have incubated their ventures recently also spoke of their experiences. This session was chaired by Prof. B. V. Phani. After an overview of the subject by Prof. Chatterjee the following speakers gave their presentations:

1. ‘Good Design-confluence of art, technology and social science’ by Mr. Satish Gokhale, Design Directions Pvt. Ltd., Pune.
2. ‘Embodiment of Intelligence in Product Design: Inspirations from Nature’ by Dr. Bishakh Bhattacharya, IITK.
3. ‘Excitement in Creativity and Invention’ by Prof. Ashok Misra, Intellectual Ventures, Bangalore.
4. ‘From Design to Design Thinking’ by Ms. Aradhana Goel, IDEO Corporation, Chicago
5. ‘Applying Nanotechnology to Coronary Artery Disease: From Invention to Innovation’ by Prof. S. Sundar Manoharan, IITK.
6. ‘Innovation in smart card technologies and their applications’ by Prof. Rajat Moona, IITK.
7. ‘Technology to Product, Lab to Industry: Experiences in Dual Drive High Energy Planetary Mill’ by Mr. Prem Prakash, CENOGEN.
8. ‘Innovation in Wireless Technology for Industrial Automation’ by Mr. Ashish Agarwal, Innovative Embedded Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Most appropriately, the session ended with a vigorous panel session that debated on the state of Innovation and Design in India in general and in Indian Industry in particular. The panelists were Prof. Ashok Misra, Intellectual Ventures, Bangalore; Ms. Aradhana Goel, Ideo Corporation, Chicago, USA; and Ms. Jhumkee Sengupta Iyengar, User in Design, Pune. Prof. J. Chatterjee of IITK moderated the discussion.

Environment related issues and research in biology are extremely contemporary and find a prime place in the research milieu of every good institute. Hence, the next theme was Health, Environment and Life and was coordinated by Profs. D. Chowdhary and S. Panda. After an initial overview by Prof. D. Chowdhary the following lectures were delivered:

1. ‘Lighting up Human Tissue to Detect Tumors’ by Dr. Asima Pradhan, IITK.
2. ‘Chemiresistor Sensors for Environmental Monitoring’ by Prof. Clifford Ho, Sandia Labs, Albuquerque, USA
3. ‘Technologies with Minimal Environmental Footprint’ by Prof. Vinod Tare, IITK.
Prof. S. Panda chaired the second session of this theme where the following lectures were given:
1. ‘Black Carbon for Green Environment’ by Prof. Nishith Verma, IITK.
2. ‘Remediation of Pollution in Natural Systems’ by Dr. Soumyen Guha, IITK.
3. ‘Drug Discovery: A multidisciplinary science’ by Dr. Vinod Bhakuni, CDRI, Lucknow.

Every institute of higher learning aims to undertake cutting edge research at the fore front of science and technology. In this context, it is critical for IITK to have a holistic research vision. With an objective to introspect on this issue, the last theme of REACH 2010 symposium was ‘Creating a Research Vision for IIT Kanpur’ and was conducted under the convenership of Prof. K. Muralidhar, Prof. A. Sharma and Prof. D. Kunzru. After an overview by Prof. Muralidhar, many eminent academicians shared their views and research experiences. The speakers included:

1. ‘IIT Kanpur-Attaining Global Leadership in Research’ by Mr. Jeet S. Bindra, Chevron, USA.
2. ‘R&D Planning - A Boeing Perspective’ by Mr. Bala Bharadvaj, Boeing India, Bangalore.
3. ‘IITK should be No. 1 in computing again’ by Prof. N. Sathyamurthy, IITK and IISER Mohali.
4. ‘Some thoughts on research in IITs - Vision 2020’ by Prof. M. S. Ananth, IIT Madras.
5. ‘What should be the Research Vision for IIT Kanpur - A Difficult Question with a Simple Answer? or vice versa?’ by Prof. A. Ghosh , IITK.
6. ‘Prospects for Intelligent Imagination’ by Dr. Anurag Gupta, IITK.
7. ‘Research-driven strategy in higher education’ by Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande, IITK.

In addition to lectures, poster sessions were also held. There was an excellent response to the symposium from the academic community of the campus. The conveners of this year’s symposium were Prof. V. Chandrasekhar, Prof. D. Kundu, Prof. M. Katiyar and Prof. B. Mazhari. Prof. M. Agrawal and Prof. K. Muralidhar were in the advisory committee. For more details on the symposium visit: http://www.iitk.ac.in/reach/.

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The roots of our national identity lie in our past, from where we also inherit our cultural heritage. The facts and evidences of the past have to be identified, classified, examined and evaluated. This process will enable the users of archaeological data to understand and analyze the events of the past and identify patterns of cultural impacts and exchanges. Historians and archaeologists who are the key players in this domain are increasingly resorting to modern scientific and computational methods in this pursuit.

With the objective of creating awareness about the emerging digital technology for digital preservation of the archaeological heritage a two-day International Workshop on Digital Preservation of Archaeological Heritage was held at IIT Kanpur. This workshop was jointly organized by IIT Kanpur, University of Allahabad and the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).

The event was inaugurated by Prof. R. K. Thareja, Deputy Director, IIT Kanpur. The welcome address was given by Prof. Onkar Dikshit, Professor and Head, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Kanpur, and Convener of the event.

The workshop consisted of two-day technical sessions including invited lectures by experts in the field and several contributed papers on the use of modern techniques for the preservation of archaeological heritage, followed by poster presentations by participants and a valedictory session. A broad array of topics was discussed during the workshop ranging from Laser scanning and virtual reality applications to geoinformatics applications in archaeology. Over 150 participants representing over 20 organizations registered for the workshop of which about 75 participants actually attended the international workshop.

Several experts delivered the review lectures on various modern digital techniques for the preservation of archaeological heritage. These included Prof. Gary Lock, Dr. R. S. Fonia, Prof. Bernard Frischer, Prof. Holly Rushmeier and many from the IITK faculty like Dr. Javed Malik, Dr. Bharat Lohani, Prof. Onkar Dikshit and Dr. R. S. Tiwari.

At the end of the event a valedictory session was organized in which the proceedings of the workshop were summarized. Also many important issues emerged from the deliberations that need immediate attention.

The entire event was funded by IIT Kanpur, Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

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The Workshop on ‘Role of Officers in Management of Institutions of Higher Technical Education’ was focused on issues directly concerning officers handling different functions and activities of the Institute. Officers representing the Institute Works Department, Health Centre, Library, Physical Education and the Administration, collectively organized the above day-long Workshop. It was inaugurated by Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director and Prof. R. K. Thareja, Deputy Director, IIT Kanpur.

The highlight of the workshop was the address by Dr. M. N. Buch, a senior IAS Officer and Chairman, Board of Governors, IIIT Gwalior, where he drew largely upon the depth of his vast experience in the Administrative services, both in the state of Madhya Pradesh and at the Centre. He also cited several real life instances involving officers who were required to act under trying circumstances to overcome difficult situations in the management of issues concerning institutions and civic administration. The address was attended by present and former officers of the Institute.

During the afternoon session, former officers of the Institute were felicitated for their significant contributions towards the building and growth of IIT Kanpur. A cultural program was also organized.

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The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur, hosted the second International Workshop on Distributed Systems to bring together researchers, students and practitioners in the area of distributed systems.

Eleven papers were selected from a total of 37 submissions. These papers were organized into four work-in-progress sessions spread over two days. The sessions also included six invited talks and a tutorial. The list of invited speakers was drawn up from Industry and Academia.

The inaugural talk on Architecture at Internet Scale was delivered by Mr. Hari Vasudev, Vice President, Yahoo! India, Software Development Pvt. Ltd. The talk provided the audience with a comprehensive walk-through on the use of the cloud platform within the Yahoo technology stack. It was followed by talks by Dr. Montresor and Dr. Picco.

Dr. Albert Montresor of the University of Trento, Italy, spoke on how P2P architecture can be leveraged to reduce the cost of sharing contents available through cloud while Dr. Gian Pietro Picco of the University of Trent, Italy, spoke on how research on wireless sensor network at the University of Trento led to the deployment of WSNs in a few real world applications in Italy. It provided a good practical overview of interesting applications where WSN deployment can be important both in terms of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The tutorial on Hadoop by Mr. Sriguruthnath Chakravarthi, Senior Manager, Yahoo! India, generated a lot of inquisitive queries especially from the students in the audience.

Two work-in-progress sessions were also scheduled on the first day, each having 3 student papers. The first work-in-progress session was for distributed systems and the second was devoted to WSN.

The second day of the workshop began with the invited talk by Dr. Mainak Chaudhuri from the Department. He highlighted the use of flexible address remapping in improving performance and scalability of both caching and communication in Mid-range ccNUMA clusters.

The second talk of the day was delivered by Prof. Rajat Moona. He focused on an enterprise level encrypting file system with distributed access. It was followed by a talk by Prof. D. Janakiram of the Department of CSE, IIT Madras, on hardening of linux kernel. The last talk of the day was delivered by Prof. R. K. Shyamasundar of TIFR who spoke on concurrent and parallel programming.

Two work-in-progress sessions were also scheduled on this day. Two student papers were on security and protocols and three on concurrent programming. All the presentations were managed by the student delegates. There were many insightful suggestions and comments from the expert delegates present in the audience. The workshop had an impressive 100% attendance of delegates.

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SEAL is a prestigious international conference series in evolutionary optimization and machine learning. This biennial event started in Seoul, South Korea in 1996 and thereafter has been held in Canberra, Australia in 1998; Nagoya, Japan in 2000; Singapore in 2002; Busan, South Korea in 2004; Hefei, China in 2006; and Melbourne, Australia in 2008.

The eighth SEAL-2010 conference was held in IITK. 141 research papers were submitted from 30 countries. After a rigorous peer-review process involving 431 reviews in total (averaging a little more than 3 reviews per paper), 61 full-length and 19 short papers were accepted for presentation (including oral and poster presentations) at the conference. The accepted papers covered a wide range of topics in simulated evolution and learning. They were classified into the following general categories: (i) Theoretical developments, (ii) Evolutionary algorithms and applications, (iii) Learning methodologies, (iv) Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms and applications, (v) Hybrid algorithms and (vi) Industrial applications.
The conference had three distinguished keynote speakers.

Prof. Narendra Karmarkar – His talk titled ‘Beyond convexity: New perspectives in Computational Optimization’ focused on providing new theoretical concepts for non-convex optimization and showcased an intelligent intermingling of fields of optimization, advanced geometry and mathematical physics.

Prof. Manindra Agrawal – His talk on ‘Primes is in P’ presented a much-improved version of his celebrated and ground-breaking 2002 work on a polynomial time algorithm for testing prime numbers. The theoretical computation work presented in this lecture was motivating for the evolutionary optimization and machine learning community at large.

Prof. Toshio Fukuda – His talk on ‘Intelligent Robot for Multi-mode Locomotion’ discussed how multiple locomotion’s adopted by animals could be mimicked in developing highly robust robots for performing different tasks. The learning behaviors portrayed in the talk were hugely interesting to researchers in evolutionary learning and robotics alike.

The conference also included two tutorials whose topics were chosen from two complementary areas of evolutionary computing. Prof. B. Yegnanarayana’s tutorial on Artificial Neural Networks and Applications in Optimization systematically introduced the principles of artificial neural networks (ANN) and their applications in various problems. The other tutorial by Prof. Debabrata Goswami on Quantum Computing introduced the fast-growing methodologies of quantum computing techniques. The ideas presented in the tutorials motivated the researchers to look for possible collaborative activities between the two fields. They made an excellent start to the four-day conference which ended with a local sightseeing trip.

The conference was financially supported by the Golden Jubilee Committee, IIT Kanpur; the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi; and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi. Helpful financial contributions were also made by Esteco, Italy and USA; General Electric, Bangalore; General Motors, Bangalore; and TCS Innovation Lab, Delhi.

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The Theoretical Chemistry Symposium (TCS) is a biennial symposium focusing on various fields of theoretical and computational chemistry. The field of theoretical and computational chemistry is a rapidly growing field and the boundaries of the field are constantly being pushed due to the large quantum of work in this area. TCS is the largest meeting of theoretical chemistry in India and is characterized by many insightful talks, posters and intense discussions. The Department of Chemistry, IIT Kanpur, hosted the 12th TCS (TCS10). The symposium lasted for 4 days. About 275 participants attended the school, including faculty, post-docs and students from India and abroad. The four days of academic sessions were packed with high-quality talks and poster presentations. Several recognized theoretical chemists from India and some invited speakers from other countries attended the meeting. There were a total of 42 speakers and about 150 poster presenters. In addition to the academic sessions, there was a special felicitation session one evening and a cultural program during another evening.

The entire program along with photographs can be viewed at http://www.iitk.ac.in/chm/tcs.

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Since the discovery of the carbon nanotube (CNT) about two decades ago, research related to its synthesis, property measurement, modeling, and applications, has seen rapid progress. This is natural for any new and novel material. The CNTs, however, unlike many other new materials, helped us understand the fundamental physics behind the dimensional dependence of material properties. Scientists are intrigued to observe the amazing transition that happens to the properties of materials as the length-scale approaches molecular dimension. For instance, the CNTs, in spite of having molecule-scale diameter, show novel physical and chemical properties. Compared to most other known materials, the CNTs exhibit superior mechanical strength, thermal/electrical conductivity, ballistic quantum conductance, and surface functionality. No wonder CNT research has led to a variety of applications, ranging from strong composites, to flat panel displays and a whole range of nanodevices. While the last two decades has seen significant progress in CNT research, the annoying questions, relating to property-tailoring, scaling-up and device durability remain unanswered.

To explore the opportunities hidden in these nagging challenges, the Department of Mechanical Engineering in association with the Materials Science Program, and the Indian Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering Kanpur Chapter hosted the ‘International Conference on Carbon Nanotechnology: Potential and Challenges’ with the theme of ‘Innovations in Carbon Nanotechnology for the New Century’, from 15th to 17th December 2010. The conference brought together academicians and researchers from industry for an exchange of ideas and opinions related to the applications of carbon nanotechnology.

Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, IIT Kanpur was the chief patron of this international conference, while Dr. S. Sankaran, President, ISAMPE-India; Prof. I. Manna, Director, CGCRI (CSIR); Prof. B. K. Mishra, Director, IMMT (CSIR); Dr. A. R. Upadhyay, Director, NAL(CSIR); Prof. A. K. Bhowmick, Director, IIT Patna; Dr. K. U. Bhasker Rao, Director, DMSRDE (DRDO); and Dr. G. Sundararajan, Director, ARCI were the patrons.
More than 200 delegates participated in the conference including 37 foreign delegates from the USA, Japan, Italy, Germany, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Portugal, and South Africa. Prof. Anil K. Bhowmick, Director, IIT Patna was the chief guest of the conference.

A total of 150 papers were presented on various topics such as carbon nanofiber, carbon nanotube, carbon based fullerence, other forms of carbon such as diamond, amorphous carbon, graphite, carbon-carbon composites, etc. To ensure the highest standards, all papers submitted to the conference were rigorously peer-reviewed by the subject experts. Only the best selected papers were published in the conference proceedings. A separate proceeding known as ‘Program and Abstracts’ was also printed which includes all abstracts. The proceedings might serve as a valuable tool for scientists, technologists, and managers working with carbon materials as well as for the Nodal Government Agencies connected with the industries.

The conference was funded by the Toshniwal Bros(SR) Pvt. Ltd., the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) and DMSRDE, the Department of Space-Indian Space Research Organization, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, the Indian Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering Kanpur Chapter, the NC A&T Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, Carl Zeiss India, the Quantum Materials Corporation, the Photonics Marketing Company, PerkinElmer India Pvt. Ltd., Vaiseshika Electron Devices, and others.

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