OBITUARY

Dr. Rai Mahesh Kumar Sinha (1945-2016) Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Dr. Rai Mahesh Kumar Sinha was born in Gorakhpur on 25th October 1945. He completed his B.Sc. from Gorakhpur University, M.Sc. from Allahabad University, M.Tech from IIT Kharagpur and Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur. He joined IIT Kanpur as Assistant Professor on 16th December, 1975 and became full Professor on 1st January 1986.

Dr. Sinha's research work was widely respected in the areas of language technology and applied artificial intelligence for Indian languages. In early 70s, he was one of the first persons to work onwork on Devanagari OCR. In late 70s and early 80s, he worked on Indian script enabling and their computer processing. He is the originator of the multi-lingual GIST technology / IDC, ISCII coding, INSCRIPT keyboarding and several other Indian language technology. Starting late 80s, he has been working on computer processing of Indian languages. He is the originator of AnglaBharati and AnuBharati technology for translation from English to Indian languages and vice-versa. He was a member of TDIL working group, National Translation Mission Advisory, Technical Advisory Committee of CDAC, Standardization committee, Associate UNESCO chair in ORBICOM. He is founding president of Society for Machine Aids for Translation and Communication (SMATAC), Fellow IETE and Senior Member IEEE.He has been a visiting professor at Michigan State University, Wayne State University, INRS Quebec and Asian Institute of Technology. He is regarded as a stalwart in the area of Indian language processing.

Academicians, fellow researchers in Indian Natural Language Processing and colleagues at IIT Kanpurdeeply mourn his passing.

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