Tag: honours

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.