awards – The KGP Chronicle

Honorary Awards for Exemplary Contributions to IIT and Society

With the onset of 2021, IIT Kharagpur is all set to welcome luminaries with exemplary contributions to the Institute and society as it announces the prestigious DSc Honoris Causa and Life Fellow awards.

The Institute will felicitate Shri Vinod Gupta, distinguished alumnus and philanthropist, US-based entrepreneur and former ambassador, Swami Atmapriyananda Maharaj, monk of the Ramakrishna Order and Former Vice-Chancellor, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (RKMVERI), Dr. Randeep Guleria, Director, All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and Dr. Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, former Managing Director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) popularly known as the “Metro Man” with Honoris Causa in acknowledgement of their contribution to public welfare, social upliftment and India’s overall development.

IIT Kharagpur recommends this award to honour luminaries who have excelled in areas of relevance to the Institute’s vision in categories related to the major stakeholders of the Institute viz. Academics and Research, Industry, Alumni and Public Welfare Services. The award is approved by the Hon’ble President of India and Visitor to the IITs.

The Institute will also confer its coveted Life Fellow award on Shri Ranbir Singh Gupta, renowned architect, distinguished alumnus, US-based entrepreneur and philanthropist, and Prof. Mahan Mj (Swami Vidyanathananda), monk of the Ramakrishna Order and eminent mathematician and Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai in acknowledgement of their contribution to academics, social service and public welfare.

IIT Kharagpur recommends this award to honour luminaries from diverse fields of academics, industry, governance, art and culture, spirituality, social service, sports, defence etc. who through their expertise contribute or likely to contribute for the benefit of students and faculty of IIT Kharagpur and support the mission statement of IIT Kharagpur – dedicated to the service of the nation.

Both the awards will be presented on the occasion of the 66th Convocation of the Institute to be held later this month.

Congratulating the awardees Director, Prof. Virendra Kumar Tewari said, “We are glad to confer these awards and hope to felicitate these luminaries in person on the occasion of the 66th Convocation of the Institute, to be held later this month, which will be live telecasted globally. They resonate with the mission statement of IIT Kharagpur, dedicated to the service of the nation, aimed to achieve a greater good for the country. Each of them is the personification of our motto YogaH Karmasu Kaushalam, which you can observe in their imprint as professionals and human self.”

Brief Bio of Honoris Causa Awardees:

Vinod Gupta – Vinod Gupta is the Managing Partner, Everest Venture Group. An entrepreneurial career spanning over 50 years, Vinod has served as an ambassador of USA. He is a philanthropist supporting causes related to education, health and welfare. Despite a modest background from a small town in Uttar Pradesh, not only he reached the pinnacle of success but gave the IIT education a new direction defining the path of success for others. He is the pioneer of management and law education in the IIT system. Read Full Bio

Swami Atmapriyananda – Swami Atmapriyananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and an Indian university administrator. He was the first Vice-Chancellor of Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (erstwhile Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University). He has been in service to humanity in the spirit of worship of God in man and has been serving higher education institutions for nearly four decades. Read Full Bio

Dr. Randeep Guleria – Dr. Randeep Guleria is an Indian pulmonologist and the Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He is regarded as one of India’s leading medical expert and is credited with the establishment of India’s first centre for pulmonary medicines and sleep disorders at AIIMS. He is the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He is also part of India’s COVID-19 response effort. Read Full Bio

Dr. E. Sreedharan – Elattuvalapil Sreedharan is an Indian civil engineer and a retired IRSE officer popularly known as the “Metro Man”. He is credited for changing the face of public transport in India with his leadership in building the Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro while he served as the managing director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation DMRC between 1995 and 2012. Read Full Bio

Life Fellow

Ranbir Singh Gupta – Ranbir (Ron) Gupta has been President of Gupta Associates Inc., and Chairman of SIGMA7 design group, architectural, planning and infrastructure consulting firms. He has over 40 years of successful experience in the management, design and construction of facilities for various global financial services, mission-critical, high-technology, and institutional projects. He is also very passionate about public service. He has served on numerous regional and state-wide boards, national professional societies, and Indian Institutes of Technology alumni associations. Read Full Bio

Swami Vidyanathananda / Mahan Mj – Prof. Mahan Mj also known as Mahan Maharaj and Swami Vidyanathananda, is an Indian mathematician and monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. He is best known for his work in hyperbolic geometry, geometric group theory, low-dimensional topology and complex geometry. Read Full Bio

Media Coverage:

Economic Times	Hindustan Times	Yahoo News
Outlook	NDTV	The Week
DataQuest	Careers 360	ABP Education

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/

INAE Honours

The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) has honoured four faculty members from IIT Kharagpur for their contributions in various fields of Engineering.

Prof. M M Ghangrekar, Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Prof. Sudip Mishra, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering and Prof. Soumitra Paul, Professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering have been elected as Fellows of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), by the Governing Council at its recent meeting. Further, Dr Pawan Goyal, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has been selected for the INAE Young Engineer Award 2020.

Prof. M M Ghangrekar

Prof. Ghangrekar who is heading the School of Environmental Science & Engineering and Head, P.K. Sinha Centre for Bioenergy and Renewables, is a stalwart in the areas of Water & Wastewater Treatment and Recycling, Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment, Bioelectrochemical processes, MFC, MDC, and Waste to Energy. His wastewater treatment plant is all set to start test operations and convert sewage water generated in the campus into reusable water typically for washing, cleaning, gardening, toilet use etc and even for potable use. Further, he has developed a bio-toilet which can run recycle wastewater and also convert waste into energy.

Prof. Sudip Misra

Swan is a regal creature but at IIT Kharagpur’s Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, it has found a new meaning – Smart Wireless Applications & Networking. SWAN is a group of researchers working with the research mentorship of Prof. Sudip Misra. The SWAN group focuses on research in smart systems enabling network technologies, especially, Ad-Hoc Networks, Sensor Networks, WiFi, WiMAX, Smart Grid Communications, Nano-communication Networks, Internet of Things, Software Defined Networks, and Big Data Networking. Some key products developed by Prof. Mishra and his research group include AgriSens: Sensor-Based Networking System for Improved Water Management of Irrigated Crops, AmbuSens: Ubiquitous Healthcare Monitoring for the Connected Era, Generic Wireless Sensor Network Kit v1.0, Physiological Wireless Sensor Network Kit, Agricultural Wireless Sensor Network Kit, Unmanned Aerial Platforms for Agriculture, Big-Sensor-Cloud Platform, Smartphone Apps for Physical Activity Sensing over Wireless Networks and many more. [Faculty Profile, Contact]

Prof. Soumitra Paul

Prof. Paul’s research interests are in the broad area of machining, grinding and cutting tool coating. He currently leads a group of students who are working on research problems as diverse as (i) finishability of oxide ceramic plasma sprayed coatings, (ii) development of diamond reinforced tribological thick coating and finishability of such coatings, (iii) high speed grinding of ceramics and carbon fibre reinforced ceramic matrix composites, (iv) environment friendly near dry micro-machining, (v) high speed grinding of aerospace metallic materials, etc. [Faculty Profile, Contact]

Prof. Pawan Goyal

In our information age, Prof. Goyal is dedicated to mining them from all across digital media. Some of the research problems include extracting and summarizing diverse opinions from online news and user-generated content, summarizing tweets in a disaster scenario for situational updates, and developing effective dialogue models. He is also actively working in the field of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics, where the focus is on developing a generic framework for solving a variety of NLP tasks such as word segmentation, morph analysis, dependency parsing, poetry to prose conversion, with a little task-specific annotated data. [Faculty Profile, Contact]

About INAE:

The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), founded in 1987 comprises India’s most distinguished engineers, engineer-scientists and technologists covering the entire spectrum of engineering disciplines. INAE functions as an apex body and promotes the practice of engineering & technology and the related sciences for their application to solving problems of national importance. The Academy also provides a forum for futuristic planning for the country’s development requiring engineering and technological inputs and brings together specialists from such fields as may be necessary for comprehensive solutions to the needs of the country. INAE honours Indian and Foreign nationals who are elected by “peer” committees in recognition of their personal achievements in engineering which are of exceptional merit and distinctive eminence in new and developing fields of technology.

Awarding Excellence – Foundation Day Honors

IIT Khargapur honoured ten of its faculty members on the occasion of the 70th Foundation Day to recognise their excellent contributions at all levels of the career path of a teacher. The Institute conferred three Chair Professorships for full Professors and five Faculty Excellence Awards for Associate and Assistant Professors based on (a) Peer Recognition / National or International Awards, (b) Research Output, (c) Teaching Feedback, (d) Sponsored Projects. Additionally the alumni foundations of the Institute in India and USA conferred two more faculty awards – the G S Sanyal Award for Faculty Excellence by the IIT KGP Foundation USA and the Excellence Young Teacher Award by the IIT KGP Foundation India.

The Chair Professorships are awarded for a 3 year term which may be renewed once. The award amount will be Rs 25,000/- per month over and above the salary. The Faculty Excellence Awards are being instituted for the amount of Rs 15,000/- per month to be added to their salary, for a 2-3 year term depending upon cases. These annual awards and recognitions are aimed to motivate the academic community who has been nurturing students’ excellence and also attract brighter students. Further at mid and entry levels the awards recognise their contributions in academics and research.

The recipients are:

Institute Chair Professor Award:
Prof. Susanta Banerjee, Materials Science Centre,
Prof. M. M. Ghangrekar, Dept. of Civil Engineering,
Prof. Sirshendu De, Dept of Chemical Engineering

Faculty Excellence Award (Associate Professor):
Prof. Modhu Sudan Maji, Dept of Chemistry and
Prof. Debarati Sen, G S Sanyal School of Telecommunication

G S Sanyal Award for Faculty Excellence:
Dr Shailendra Kumar Varshney, Dept of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering

Faculty Excellence Award (Assistant Professor):
Dr. Akhilesh Kumar, Dept of Industrial & Systems Engineering,
Dr. Partha Pratim Jana, Dept of Chemistry,
Dr. Amit Ghosh, School of Energy Science & Engineering

Excellent Young Teacher Award:
Dr. Rajesh Kannan, Dept of Mathematics

The Institute is also recently invited nominations for Staff Excellence Awards which will be given annually to one member of each Category A, B and C.

The award amount is Rs 50,000/-. Staff members both permanent or under Institute contract who have worked continuously for a minimum of 5 years and made significant impact on the Institute’s functioning through outstanding dedication, competence and exceptional performance, excellent service to academic community and staff and ingenuity, are eligible for this award. The recipients are:

Shri Pratap Chandra Das, Deputy Registrar of Purchase and E-III (Recruitment section) in Group A category,

Mr. Soumik Basu, Assistant Engineer of E & M unit of IW section in Group B category and

Mr. Sabyasachi Patra, Senior Assistant of Registrar’s office jointly with Mr. Premansu Nag, Senior Technician of CSE in Group C category