Tag: Chair Professor

Driving force

Recruiting, encouraging and retaining talent becomes imperative for the success of an educational institution of the stature of IIT Kharagpur, recognized already as an Institution of Eminence. Chair Professorships are critical to this exercise. Institute Chairs, Faculty Excellence awards and alumni-funded Chairs all contribute to creating an ecosystem that nurtures creativity, rewards excellence and provides an incentive for hard work.

It is a privilege for IIT Kharagpur that its alumni understand this connection. Over the years, several Chairs have been created by the alumni to encourage excellence. Alumni-endowed Chairs are, in fact, increasingly driving research in critical and challenging areas of research. In the year 2018-19, several Chairs were instituted by the alumni. Among them is the Lord Kumar Bhattacharya Chair Professor of Manufacturing set up by alumnus Prof. Tapan Bagchi (DSc/2012/IM).

The Lord Kumar Bhattacharya Chair Professor of Manufacturing intends to identify sectors that hinge on excellence in manufacturing and to promote vigorous partnership with industry with matching aspiration while making maximum use of the technological capabilities of IIT Kharagpur. It could lead to product-innovations that will make a mark in markets abroad.

The appointee of this Chair for 2019-22 is Prof. Surjya K. Pal, Mechanical Engineering, who also heads IIT Kharagpur’s DHI Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology. The Centre was set up in November 2017 by the Department of Heavy Industries (DHI) under the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Govt. of India, to strengthen the country’s capital goods sector through a constant upgradation of manufacturing technology and technology transfer to industry, particularly to MSMEs. Working with a consortium of some of the country’s premier private and public sector companies, the Centre is handling nine projects that are destined to change the face of the manufacturing industry in India.

Not surprisingly, Prof. Pal is honoured to be appointed the Chair. He says, “Lord Bhattacharyya was a pioneer in bringing academic research to the industries in order to create an impact in the industrial world. The DHI Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing was set up with the same motto… Receiving the award in the name of Lord Bhattacharyya is thus a real honour to me.”

Prof. Pallab Dasgupta of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, who has been at the forefront of AI research at IIT Kharagpur since the 1990s, was recently appointed the A.K. Singh Distinguished Chair Professorship for Artifical Intelligence research. Prof. Dasgupta talks of the honour, “The Chair, named after A.K. Singh a dedicated police officer, bestows a responsibility beyond academic distinction. My present goal is to develop an interdisciplinary research group on verifiable AI technology which will focus on enabling the integration of AI in embedded systems with provable safety guarantees.”

Each of the Alumni-endowed Chairs lays special emphasis on areas or teaching excellence. Take the Aditya Choubey Chair that promotes Re-water research, or the Excellent Young Teacher Award instituted by the IIT Foundation of India seeks to attract top talent as faculty and recognize their contributions made to students through their commitment to teaching, involvement in student related sports, social, cultural, technology, innovation or entrepreneurship. The latest recipient of the award is Prof. Swanand R. Khare of the Mathematics department.

Endowed Chairs are not only an honour for the named holder of the appointment but also an enduring tribute to the donor who establishes it. Take the A.S. Davis Chair Professorship instituted by Mr. Vinod Gupta (BTech/AG/1967) who set up the Chair recently in memory of his teacher, Prof. A.S. Davis, who taught him Thermodynamics. (The recipient of the Chair, announced recently, is Prof. Prasanta K. Das, Dean, Faculty, and Professor, Mechanical Engineering).

Or take the Amitabh Agrawal Chair Professorship instituted in 2018 by Amitabh Agrawal, an Electrical Engineering graduate from the Batch of 1967. This particular chair lays special emphasis on the study of power system, control and automation. The recipient of the honour is Prof. Ashok Pradhan of the Electrical Engineering Department.

Sometimes, the alumni-endowed Chairs try to add a novel dimension to research. Take the Avinash Gupta Chair awarded to faculty of the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning. Instituted in the honour Avinash Gupta, a graduate from this particular department, honours his deep interest in the medical domain. Prof. Subrata Chattopadhyay, recipient of the honour, says, “I feel proud to take forward his legacy that brings together two high relevant aspects of modern life – the aesthetics of architecture and the criticality of proper healthcare.” A recent symposium organized by Prof. Chattopadhyay brought together experts from the diverse fields of medicine and academics to explore issues affecting modern healthcare from theh perspective of lifestyle, affordability, prevention habits and infrastructure.

The Shyamal Ghosh and Sunanda Ghosh Chair, awarded to faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department, lays special emphasis on design and manufacturing of mechanical structures and mechanism. Prof. Amiya Ranjan Mohanty, appointed the Chair, says, “This recognition has given me visibility among KGPian groups across the world and I will continue to do my research and teaching with passion and vigour in the areas of machinery condition monitoring and industrial acoustics and noise control.” Likewise, the M.A. Ramulu & Mrs. Saroja Ramulu Chair, awarded to Prof. Jayanta Bhattacharya, from the Mining Engineering Department, is expected to promote further research into mining engineering and safety.

A Kgpian for A Kgpian

Alumnus and eminent academician Prof. Tapan Bagchi (DSc/2012), is setting up a Chair Professorship in the memory of illustrious alumnus Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya who recently passed away. An MoU to this effect was signed last week with Prof. Bagchi to this effect.

The objective of the ‘Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya Chair Professorship Award’ will be to carry out state-of-the-art teaching, research development and industrial collaboration at the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Lord Bhattacharyya was a renowned academic, manufacturing expert and leading consultant for industry and governments. He served as a Professor at the University of Warwick. The entrepreneur in him led him to found the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), UK’s leading research and innovation centre. He did his BTech in 1960 in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. He has contributed immensely to his alma mater through spearheading various collaborations between the Institute and WMG in areas encompassing design and manufacturing, composites and sustainable materials, sound quality engineering, medical technology and healthcare, hybrid vehicles and steel technology. WMG also became the international partner of IIT Kharagpur’s Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology in 2015. Lord Bhattacharyya passed away in February 2019. (Click here to read more on Lord Bhattacharyya)

To honour the contributions of Lord Bhattacharyya, Prof. Tapan Bagchi, who himself is a stalwart and academic expert in multifarious domains and has been associated with IIT Kharagpur and various other academic institutions as faculty and as Director, is setting up an endowment for an amount ₹75, 00,000/- to cover the Chair Award expenses for perpetuity.

WMG set up by Late Prof Lord Bhattacharyya and the Warwick University too, have agreed to support this initiative.

Prof. Bagchi is currently serving as Adjunct Professor at IIT Kharagpur. The students and researchers have been benefitted with his dynamic expertise in areas including  Specialty Chemicals Manufacturing, Production Planning, Supply Chain Management, TQM, Product Engineering, Process Engineering, Technology Transfer, Petrochemicals R&D, Facilities Planning, Economic and Cost Analysis and Corporate Planning. He was previously faculty at the Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Vinod Gupta School of Management before joining Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (Shirpur) and KiiT University (Bhubaneswar) as Director. He has also served as faculty at IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay and has an academic association at present with IIM Lucknow. IIT Kharagpur awarded him D.Sc. in 2012.

Prof. Bagchi has also set up a modern Reading Room cum Lounge in the Institute’s Central Library.

Alumnus Honours Former Faculty

Who Was Prof. A S Davis?

It was 1965 . . . few pairs of eyes rolled watching a boy being grabbed by his neck from his room D-231 at RK Hall, by a Professor and taken to the laboratory.

The Professor was A S Davis from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. The young boy was Vinod Gupta (B.Tech./AG/1967), now an entrepreneur and philanthropist. Recently, Vinod has donated USD 100,000 to his alma mater IIT Kharagpur to set up a Chair Professorship in the memory of Prof. Davis.

The teacher who won’t let me miss my lessons . . .

It was 1962, when a boy from Rampur Maniharan, a village near UP’s Saharanpur entered the gates of the first IIT. After admission, he was allotted Room No. D-231 in the Radhakrishnan Hall of Residence (RK Hall). There he met Prof. Davis for the first time where the latter was the warden.

Vinod Gupta during his student life at IIT KGP

“I was one among the hundreds of students who knew him and took courses from him. In our times, teachers like Prof. Davis personally saw to it that we learned our courses well. He made sure that we learned the missed lesson, our lab work was done right before we left. He insisted that the answer to every question was done on one page, on the right side, and the left side was for our calculations,” reminisces Vinod who took two courses from him, one in Thermodynamics and the other in air conditioning and refrigeration.

But it was much more than the teachings of a professor influencing a student’s life . . .

“Prof. Davis emphasized that the process was more important than the results. His teachings have influenced my life in a very significant way. But that was one among the several influencing factors he had on me. Prof. Davis used to spend a lot of time in the Hall, mentoring students through long hours of socialization. What inspired me most about him was that, besides being a brilliant teacher and a great communicator, he was an extremely practical human being with a wit equally matching his brilliance,” remarked Vinod in his usual way while remembering his golden moments of the 60s’ at IIT Kharagpur.

Honouring my Professor . . .

“I believe the easiest but the most profound way to influence the world is to uplift the education system. That was my inspiration in setting up a scholarship in my department at IIT Kharagpur within 5 years of my graduation. That remains my inspiration in setting up this endowment, 51 years after my graduation,” he said.

The endowment for Prof. A. S. Davis Chair Professorship will be used to pay a top-up salary to a senior professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the area of Thermodynamics to carry out the state-of-the-art teaching, research and other development in the department.

Vinod Gupta, today synonymous to the introduction of management and legal education in the IIT system. The Vinod Gupta School of Management and the Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law are Tier-I schools in areas of business management and law in India. Despite setting up his base in USA, Vin, as he is popularly known at IIT KGP and among fellow alumni, has continued his philanthropic work at IIT KGP and in villages of Uttar Pradesh. Vinod has not only nurtured young talents and the education system but has also saluted those who have inspired him to excel.

Finding that one Prof. Davis of today . . .

I am confident despite the increasing teacher-student ratio, there are teachers who innovate pedagogical methods to augment individual attention and mentorship” hopes Vinod.