Tag: Achievement

Moment of Pride

It is a moment of pride for IIT Kharagpur with two back-to-back honours for the Institute’s faculty member and alumnus.

Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee, Associate Professor at the Dept. of Geology and Geophysics and the School of Environmental Science and Engineering has been selected for the prestigious award ‘Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prize’ for the year 2020 in Earth Atmosphere Ocean and Planetary Sciences.  

It is a rare distinction conferred upon scientists who have demonstrated exceptional potential in science and technology. The award will be presented in the presence of the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, who holds the chair of the President of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research. 

Dr. Mukherjee’s work in the area of groundwater exploration for suitable and sustainable drinking water sources has been widely acknowledged, nationally and internationally. Recently his research group developed an AI prediction model for detecting Arsenic in groundwater in the Gangetic delta. The work finds mention in communications by the Jal Jeevan Mission.  His research areas include

Arsenic and other contaminants fate and transport: global-scale to laboratory-scale;  Interaction of groundwater with sea and river water; Groundwater recharge and estimation; Groundwater evolution (flow and chemistry) of large sedimentary basins; Groundwater exploration, management and remediation; Urban Geoscience. Faculty Profile

Adding to the celebrations is the star alumnus of IIT Kharagpur Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet. This ’93 batch Silver Medalist (Dept. of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering) has been named among the 100 most influential people of 2020 by the Time magazine.

He used his natural gifts and strong work ethic to rise through the ranks of Google (now Alphabet) by leading many of their most successful products, such as Drive, Gmail and Maps, cites Time magazine. Citation

James Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase writes about Pichai, “The challenges Sundar faces in his role are among the most important of our time—issues of innovation, privacy, regulation and competition. But his analytical, humble and inclusive leadership will position Google to meet the moment. These are traits the world could use a lot more of in these times.” 

Full Story: https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2020/5888419/sundar-pichai/

 

 

The Changemaker

Times of India

Alumnus Arjun Malhotra has been conferred with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the Dataquest Digital Leadership Conclave 2018. Arjun who graduated from the Dept. of Electronics & Electrical Communications Engineering at IIT Kharagpur with B.Tech. (Hons.) in 1970, is considered to be one of the pioneers of the Indian IT industry with his leadership role and entrepreneurial zeal of over three decades. At the Dataquest ICT Conference & Awards 2018, Arjun was felicitated with this award for his outstanding contribution in organizing and building the Indian IT industry from where it was over 40 years ago to today.

Arjun’s journey as an IT leader started with co-founding HCL in the 70s’. He played a pivotal role in putting Indian IT giant on the global map.  And it was only the beginning. Arjun has guided several ventures across the IT sector globally, partnered with several global majors like Hewlett-Packard and Dr. James Martin and launched joint ventures to create new products and solutions addressing markets untapped before. Arjun took charge of Headstrong after the merger of his venture Techspan with the former and led it to one of the fastest-growing IT-based Financial Services companies till 2011 when Genpact acquired Headstrong.  He is at present the Chairman of SolMark and Magic Software Inc.

Arjun Malhotra with Kgpians Kiran Behera, Pranav Chavan, Poonam Gupta and Bhavya Kumari at Gurugram in 2017

Arjun has been a father figure for the entire tech startup community in India through the various initiatives including TiE and PAN IIT. He has encouraged and cultivated the spirit was entrepreneurship, that played a big role in shaping, perhaps, the most number of tech entrepreneurs who went on to start their own ventures in hardware, software, and services; and thereby contributed to building the Indian IT industry. He also serves on the board of corporations and supports several start-ups.

But IT is not all. Arjun’s vision for giving direction to the Indian telecom industry led to the foundation of the G S Sanyal School of Telecommunication at IIT Kharagpur. The School is now an R&D leader in  5G Communications, Biomedical Signal Processing, Cellular Networks, Chemical and Material Science and Cloud RAN. He further envisioned encouraging students right from their undergraduate studies to explore innovative ideas which could later become their entrepreneurial ventures. With this in mind, he seed-funded the M N Faruqui Innovation Centre at IIT Kharagpur. These were not only giving back initiatives to his alma mater but pillars of building the tech ecosystem and human resource development for India and the world.

With this award Arjun joined the ranks of Prof. R Narasimhan, considered as the father of computer science research in India, F C Kohli, referred as the father of the Indian software industry, Dr. N. Seshagiri, Founding Director General, National Informatics Centre, Govt. of India, Dr. Vijay P. Bhatkar, best known as the architect of India’s national initiative in supercomputing, Nandan Nilekani and many more.

“To become a true leader, you must never be shy of venturing into the unknown and let your confidence and the team back you up to achieve the impossible,” says Arjun.

Arjun is now championing the Centre for Classical Arts at IIT Kharagpur which would introduce in collaborative interventions in Indian classical music and other classical arts with science and technology.

with inputs from PR NewsWire