alumni newsletter - indian institute of technology … last iitg alumni newsletter was published in...

Alumni NewsletterJanuary 2010-2011

Alumni Affairs Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati

Guwahati - 781039, Assam, India

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Alumni Newsletter January 2010-2011

Word from Editor

Dear Alumni,

The last IITG Alumni Newsletter was published in 2009 and, thereafter, due to certain technical problems, we could not publish it in 2010. How-ever, this year we are back with the new Volume 3 with many features. The current volume covers the news concerning IIT Guwahati, such as various cultural and technical events, lecture series, academic col-laborations, campus updates, laurels won both by students and faculty members. It also highlights about upcoming events along with our plan for the Alumni Meet in the year 2011 and most importantly, some latest updates of our alumni. Please go through this newsletter and forward it to those friends whom we could not reach till now. We do agree that the alumni coverage of this volume is not sufficient for our purpose since we would like to hear much more from our pass out students who are now spread globally. We hope that in future we will receive more information from you. I, personally, would be happy to see that the forthcoming issues of this newsletter are mostly covered with the proud achievements of our alumni. Hope to interact with you all in the Alumni Meet 2011.

With best wishesDr. Abhijit Mitra

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Contents

Academic Activities ........................................................................... 01

Campus News .................................................................................... 05

Students Achievements ...................................................................... 11

Faculty Achievements .............................................................. 12

Alumni Affairs .......................................................................... 13

Upcoming events ...................................................................... 14

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1 Academic Activity

International Conference

1. An international Conference on Climate Change & Water held at the Department of Humanities and Social Science, IIT Guwahati, during January 3-5, 2011.

2. An International Conference on Fiber Optics and Photonics (PHOTONICS 2010) held at IIT Guwa-hati, during December 11-15, 2010.

3. An International Workshop on Recent Advances in Computational Fluid Dynamics (RACFD), a sat-ellite event of ICM 2010, held at the Department of Mathematics, IIT Guwahati, during August 30- September 2, 2010.

4. An International Conference on Advanced Nano-materials and Nanotechnology (ICANN-2009) held at the Centre for Nanotechnology, IIT Guwahati, during December 9-11, 2009.

Short-term courses/Workshop

1. A workshop on Typography, Graphic Design and Packaging Design was held in the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati, during January 17-21, 2011.

2. A short term course on Speech and Audio Pro-cessing (WiSSAP 2011) was held at the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIT Guwahati, during January 8-11, 2011.

3. An advanced Instructional school on Numeral Linear Algebra funded by the NBHM held at the Department of Mathematics, IIT Guwahati, during December 2-22, 2010.

4. A short term training course on Advanced Tech-niques in Cellular & Molecular Biology organized by the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Guwahati, during December 15-19, 2010.

5. A short term course on Analytical and Numeri-cal Solutions of Differential Equations, held at the Department of Mathematics, IIT Guwahati, during December,6-10,2010.

7. A workshop on Design for Sustainability held in the Department of Design, during October 4-7, 2010.

Academic and Research Collaboration

Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed/ re-newed with Universities/Industries for exchange of students, faculty and research collaborations:

Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal1. Fermilab, USA2. Karlstad University, Sweden3. National University of Singapore, Singapore4. Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany5.

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George-August University Gottingen (GAUG), 6. GermanyUniversity of Notingham, UK7. Pardubice University, Czech Republic8. Tata Consultancy Limited9. Wipro Technology10.

Exchange program/Internship

1. Ten students from IIT Guwahati were selected under WILLPower (Window India Learning Link Power) mobility program for pursuing higher stud-ies/advanced courses/research in European Univer-sities. WILLPOWER is a mobility program under

Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window whose main objective is to strengthen the existing network of co-operation between Indian and Euro-pean institutions. This program was coordinated by the Ecole Central De Nantes, France, and involves 17 partner (10 European and 7 Indian) institutions.

2. Three students from IIT Guwahati pursued In-ternship at Karlstad University, Sweden, under the MoU signed between IIT Guwahati and the Karl-stad University.

News from Students’ Association

Faculty-Student Interaction along with sports com-petition conducted by Students’ Association like MESA, CEPSTRUM, Genesis, CSEA and ACE. They also arranged workshop and seminar and ex-pert Guest Lectures along with some talk on Intern-ship among students. Some of students’ Associa-tions had published e-Magazines, too.

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years and has served in the power sector in the fields of generation, transmission, large system operation and distribution. Dr. Singh has held office as the Chairman and Managing Director, Power Grid Cor-poration of India Limited; Chairman and Founder Member of the International Group of Very Large System Operators (a group of countries having generation capacity of 60,000 MW or more) and as the President of the International Council of Large Electric Systems, India. He has also served in com-panies including NTPC Limited and Tata Iron & Steel Company and has also worked as a consultant to the World Bank. He has received several awards

2 Campus Newsincluding the Green Award 2006 from the World Bank among others.

Inauguration of Incubation Centre, IITG

The Technology Incubation Centre (TIC) which was initiated by IIT Guwahati in the year 2008 is registered as a Society under the Registration of So-cieties Act XXI of 1860 with the goal of encourag-ing entrepreneurial initiatives amongst the members of the IITG community, and alumni of IIT Guwahati and other Government Colleges in Assam are the target entrepreneurs. This may enable the TIC to explore and work on ideas with the goal of eventu-ally implementing them through technology startup companies. An area of approximately 4000 square meters has been allocated in the Technology Com-plex for this purpose. The support from the centre will be made available in the form of seed loan, and technical and business mentoring. Besides, a startup-support loan has also been approved by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Govt. of India, for financial assistance. A seven member Governing Body has been constituted under the Chairmanship of the Director, IIT Guwa-hati. One Council of Management has been formed to administer, direct and control the affairs of the IITG-TIC. Incubatee, M/s. Brigosha Technologies Pvt. Ltd. has already been inducted to the IITG-TIC to build high standards in the algorithm and product development world in the fields of Digital Signal Processing, Statistical Signal Processing, Control & Embedded Systems.

New Chairman, Board of Governors

Dr. Rajendra Prasad Singh assumed charge as Chairman, Board of Gov-ernors, IIT Guwahati on 8 February 2010. Dr. Singh is presently the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Jindal Power. Dr. Singh has had a career spanning more than 32

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PanIIT Conclave 2010

The PanIIT 2010 Conclave was held at Noida, Del-hi, during October 29-31, 2010. Delegates compris-ing faculty, staff & students (for volunteers & Rock band performance) from IIT Guwahati attended the conclave. IIT Guwahati put up an exhibition stall at PanIIT venue for showcasing its technology, research and recent achievements as well as for

promoting active interaction and networking with alumni. Quite a few alumni of IIT Guwahati at-tended the conclave and visited our stall. A general body meeting (GBM) of the IIT Guwahati Alumni Association (IITGAA) was held in the sideline of the PanIIT conclave. The meeting was organized by Mr. Sumit Mudgal, President of IITGAA, and was chaired by Prof. Gautam Barua, Director of IIT Gu-wahati and the patron of ITGAA. The GBM, among other things, discussed the following:1. Proposed to open new chapters of the IITGAA in various locations such as Bangalore, National Capi-tal Region (NCR) and Mumbai.

2. Proposed to explore opening a chapter in San Francisco, USA.

3. Proposed to organize alumni reunion program in 2011. A suitable date of reunion will be decided by the EC, IITGAAA, in consultation with IITG.

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IITG Entrepreneurial Summit 2010IIT Guwahati Entrepreneurship Summit (IES) has been initiated with the primary objective of instill-ing and promoting the spirit of entrepreneurship amongst the IIT Guwahati community and the youth of North East India. It is organized by the En-trepreneurial Development Cell (EDC) of IIT Gu-wahati and comprises of a series of talks by eminent speakers, interactive sessions, start-up showcasing and networking sessions. The alumni Nishant Babu, Sandeep Reddy, Ankit Nagori, Rohit Pandey, Pra-teek Dayal and Karandeep are the mentors of this cell. The IES is organised almost every year in the month of March and witnesses inspiring talks by many prominent entrepreneurs and people from various related fields.

Activities of National Service Scheme

Working through the Welfare Board, IIT Guwahati and National Service Scheme, IIT Guwahati, the student volunteers from IIT Guwahati have tried to make a difference in the lives of the people inside and outside the campus walls. The following proj-ects are undertaken:

1. The project Zero Illiteracy Zone (ZIZ) campaign started by our student community-where over 150 school-going children in the age group of 5-15 years from nearby villages were taught Mathematics, English and General Science four days a week.

2. Blood donation camp organized in collaboration with Guwahati Medical College and Hospital.

3. Classes were also conducted for the security guards of the institute and mess workers in the hostels to teach them English and improve general awareness.4. Old clothes were collected from the campus and distributed to the needy in Guwahati city.5. Other activities such as popularizing the Gan-dhian philosophy, visiting orphanages, mentoring students of K.V. IITG etc.

Events

Alcheringa 2010The edition of Alcheringa ’10 was called, ‘Alcherin-ga Xtreme’. The biggest attraction of Alcher Xtreme was the swiss folk-metal band ‘Eluveitie’. This was very first time that Eluveitie performed in India, and that it did so for Alcher speaks volumes for the fests growing reputation. Another mega pronite that was a part of Alcher was the ‘Crescendo’, the night that the multiple award winning trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy performed live in front of a capacity crowd in excess of 15k. Other professional perfor-mances included the only Indian stand-up comedian on the international scene, Vir Das, performing here with his comic rock-band Alien Chutney and Italian Musician Giuliano Modarelli in Saaz, the classical night. MTV stunt mania came to the campus and performed some insane bike stunts in front of an awestricken audience. Xtreme sports such as Paint-ball, which people usually refer to as the live ver-sion of Counter Strike, took place along with Wall Climbing, Zorbing, etc.

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The author of the best-selling novel Anything for you, ma’am, Tushar Raheja, gave some words of advice as a part of Alcher’s social initiative aimed at spreading AIDS awareness. Besides all these pro-shows, the various competitions witnessed capacity participation. Rock-o-phonix, the rock band com-petition, was an exhibition of exceptional class and energy and was very well received by the crowds, and it was undoubtedly one of the best rock-band exhibitions ever seen.

In its 15th edition from 3rd-6th February 2011, Al-cheringa will model itself around the theme ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ wherein the 4 days of festivity will be highlighted by jhatkas from movies around the world.

Techniche -2010Techniche 2010 the annual techno-management fes-tival of the institute was organized during September 2-5, 2010 with great success. The twelfth edition of Tecniche which followed the motto- “Revolution-izing Youth, Redefining Technology” was hosted with the aim to provide India’s budding engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators and technocrats with a platform to showcase their respective skills.

One of the main attractions of Techniche 2010 was the Lecture Series which had eminent scientists in-cluding a Nobel laureate, entrepreneurs and intel-ligentsia from around the world deliver lectures on their work, share their experiences and, thus, great-ly inspire the students. The speakers included Mr Richard M. Stallman, Father of GNU project, a free UNIX-like Operating System; Mr Nathan Schulhof, father of MP3 player industry, developer of the first word processor for Apple Computers Inc.; Dr Ferid Murad, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Medicine among others.

The three day event started with the Guwahati Half Marathon aimed at promoting awareness about the environment among the youth.

Inter IIT Sports Meet, 2010

The Inter IIT Sports Meet was held at IIT Delhi this year. The IIT Guwahati contingent comprising of students, faculty and staff members have won many laurels. The highlights have been as follows:

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set up a Conference Centre adjacent to the Audito-rium with a provision of 4 halls (2 halls of 150 per-sons capacity and 2 halls of 200 persons capacity) and a food court.

HostelsUmiam Hostel, Dibang and Brahmputra are the lat-est addition to the other 7 hostels of IITG. The hos-tels take its name from the river Umiam, Dibang in Meghalaya and Brahmputra in Guwahati.

1. Participants from IIT Gu-wahati won Gold Medal in the events like High Jump, Javelin Throw, Pole Vault, 400 m Run.

2. This time students of IIT Guwahati secured first position and earned Gold medal in Cricket which never happened in the His-tory of IIT Guwahati where both Mr. Anshul Garg and Mr. B. Santosh Praneeth made century in Cricket first time.

3. In some of the event like Discus Throw and weight lifting Student of IIT Gu-wahati earned Silver Med-al.

4. Volleyball and Table Tennis Team of IIT Guwa-hati won Bronze Medal.

Completed and Up-coming Facilities

Conference CentreConsidering the number of national and international conferences held each year in the institute, IITG has

Conference Centre

Umiam Hostel

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Central WorkshopA Pre fabricated Steel Building of 5430 sq. meter area has been constructed to serve as Central Work-shop.

Railway Reservation UnitConsidering the distance of the Panbazar Railway Reservation Office and Post Office from the cam-pus, the institute now has established an extension of Railway Reservation Counter and Post Office Counter within the campus.

Upcoming facilities

Cultural center and New SAC building: A Cultural Center and Sports Building have been set up in the

Student Activity Center (SAC). The Cultural Center houses a Dance Room, Music room and Party Hall. The Sports Building is equipped with facilities of Swimming Pool and all other sports activities.

Central Workshop

Railway Reservation Unit

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1. Muthukumaran V. and Shubaash A. R. G., M.Tech. Department of Biotechnology, have won the Best Entry award in IDEAZ 2009- The Pan-IIT Business Idea Competition.

2. Shreya Kothari, B.Tech. Civil Engineering, won the 3rd prize in the national level Infrastructure Imagination Contest organized by Essar Steel as a part of Infrastructure Excellence Awards 2010.

3. The top 3 positions went to IIT Guwahati teams at the Guwahati Edition of Tata Crucible - the Campus Business Quiz organized nationwide in 20 cities by the Tata Group. The IIT Guwahati team of Kapinjal Sharma and Chaitanya Joshi secured the 7th po-sition overall in the national finals from among over 3000 teams in India.

4. Mr Naresh Kasoju, Research Scholar, Dept.of Biotechnology, was awarded the Bajpai - Saha Award by the Society for Biomaterials and Artificial Organs India for the Best Student Paper Presenta-tion at the International Conference on Biomateri-als, Artificial Organs and Tissue Engineering.

5. Mohit Goel, Department of Biotechnology, was selected as a Khorana Scholar 2010 by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum and the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.

6. First Words: Deluxe, an iPhone application de-veloped among others by Abhimanyu Kumar, B Tech. during his internship at Learning Touch (Bos-

ton, USA), was adjudged the second Best Applica-tion for Toddlers in MacWorld Expo 2010 held in San Francisco, USA.

7. Sahil Salunke, B.Tech (M&C) second year stu-dent has been selected as the winner in ITC’s Class-mate Ideas for India Challenge 2010 which was a nationwide contest to make the youth of India think and come out with ideas. In over 60,000 entries, only 5 ideas were considered the best.

8. Apoorv Tomar, M.Des. second year student has been awarded silver medal for his short fiction film “nothing of consequence to be responsible” for its original narrative and minimalist visual style in 3rd Cut-In students film festival 2011 organized by Centre for media and cultural studies, Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai.

9. The 4th Styling and Design Conclave 2010 was organized by the Styling and Design Group of So-ciety of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) the body that looks after issues covering vehicle styling aspects and its changing status in India at the sidelines of Auto Expo 2010. The team comprising of Ketan Chaturmutha, Menoulhoulie Kire and Shantanu Joshi, M Des., IITG won 2nd Runner up trophy for their concept car ‘Figo’. The students were inspired by the way fish move and commu-nicate as groups in the sea. ‘Figo’ is based on the concept of a clean, safe, intelligent and eco friendly vehicle which can be used for commuting between home and work. Figo was designed keeping in mind the Indian roads and parking problems.

3 Students Achievements

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Dr Subhash C. Mishra, Professor, Depart. of Me-chanical Engineering, was awarded the Shiksha Rat-tan Puraskar on 7th April, 2010 at New Delhi. He has been elected as a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering(INAE). He was also a Vis-iting Professor, Depart. of Energetics, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy during April July, 2009.

Dr Vikash Kumar Dubey, Associate Professor, Department of Biotechnology, has been awarded the Innovative Young Scientist Award for 2009 by Department of Biotechnology, Government of In-dia, New Delhi, for his work on Leishmaniasis.

Dr S. Senthivelan, Associate Professor, Depart-ment of Mechanical Engineering, was awarded the BOYSCAST Fellowship by Department of Sci-ence & Technology, Govt. of India. He was also a Visiting Scholar at Gear and Power Transmission Research Laboratory, Ohio State University, USA, during May-August, 2010.

Dr M. K. Purkait, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, and has been selected for

the BOYSCAST Fellowship, 2009–2010 by the De-partment of Science and Technology, Government of India. Dr Purkait has also received the Indian Na-tional Science Academy (INSA) medal for Young Scientist 2009.

Dr Abhijit Mitra, Associate Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, was elected as a Fellow of the Institution of Elec-tronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE), New Delhi, and also received the N V Gadadhar Memorial Award 2010 presented by IETE.

Dr Hemant B. Kaushik, Assistant professor, De-partment of Civil Engineering, was presented the INAE Young Engineers Award 2010 by the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Dr S.K. Dash, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, has been awarded the Endeavour Research Fellowship by the Govt. of Australia for the year 2009, to carry out research work in the Re-search Centre for Geomechanics and Railway Engi-neering at University of Wollongong, Australia.

D. Uday Kumar, Assistant Professor, Department of Design has designed the symbol for the Indian Rupee which was selected from among five short listed symbols by the Govt. of India. The symbol is designed using the Devanagari letter ‘Ra’ and Ro-man capital letter ‘R’. The letters are derived from the word Rupiah in Hindi and Rupees in English, both of which denote the currency of India. The derivation of letters from these words conveys the association of the symbol with currency rupee.

4 Faculty Achievements

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5 Alumni News

The Alumni Connect Campaign It was held by the Student Gymkhana in the period Jan.-Feb. 2010 with the aim to update the informa-tion about our alumni in the alumni database. This updated database can be used to bring all the alumni under a common platform and to develop a strong relationship with each and every alumnus. So far, 200 updates have been received. It will be practiced every year.

Alumni News

Rishi Raj (BTech/Mech/2006) After completing Ph.D. in May 2010, Rishi is currently continu-ing as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Maryland, USA. His research primarily concerns investiga-tion of pool boiling heat transfer under micrograv-ity environments as encountered in space-based applications. The relatively poor understanding of gravity effects on pool boiling and multiphase flow has been identified by NASA as one of the primary obstacles to reliable design of space based hardware and processes.

Aditya SV (BTech/ECE/2007) Currently, he is working at Sam-sung Electronics Corporation (SEC) as a Product Manager in Seoul, South Korea. The job profile involves thorough un-derstanding of the mobile phone industry and the latest telecommunication technolo-gies. This helps in taking crucial decisions regarding pricing, positioning and distribution of the mobile phones as per the market norms. His responsibilities also encompass modifying the design and features of the mobile phones to cater to the needs of the lo-cal markets.

Amit Qusba (BTech/ECE/2007) Amit is about to finish his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Com-puter Engineering at North Carolina State University, USA. His research team is working on an Artificial Retina project. This project aims to develop technologies to design a retinal prosthesis device for patients suffering from certain retinal degeneration diseases.

Mrinalini D (BTech/EC/2008) Mrinalini is working as a Soft-ware Engineer in Qwest Com-munications (India) in the Rev-enue Assurance Team. Her work involves monitoring the Tele-com Billing Applications to en-sure that no loss of revenue occurs to Qwest

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Communications during the processing- right from the moment a call is recorded to the point when it appears on an invoice to the customer.

Harpreet S. Dhillon (BTech /ECE /2008) Harpreet is currently working towards his Ph.D. de-gree at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests are primarily in the fields of wireless communications and information theory, and his current research focus is on develop-ing tractable framework for designing and analyz-ing heterogeneous cellular networks.

Dr Priyanka Srivastava (Ph.D./BT/ 2005) Dr Priyanka is current-ly working as Assistant Professor at Department of Bio Sciences and Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil-nadu, India. She is working in the area of Plant Biotechnology.

Dr Atul Kumar Singh (PhD/ BT/ 2004)Dr Atul is currently a Post-doctoral Research As-sociate in Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA. His research interest covers Microbiology, Bio-chemistry and Nanobioscences. He is presently working on the detection and characterization of pathogenic bacteria by light scat-terometer, BARDOT (BActerial Rapid Detection using Optical light scattering).

Upcoming eventsSERC Winter School on “Green Chemistry, Re-search, Teaching & Applications:Exploring Op-portunities in Green Chemistry” by Department of Chemistry, March 6, 2011.

DIMENSION & MATRIX: Seminar/Workshop) by Department of Maths on March 11, 2011

EngD SUMMER SCHOOL 2011:Summer School applied to research in fossil energy technologies by Centre for Energy, July 2, 2011.

Techniche 2011 on September 1-4, 2011ALumni Meet expected to be held in September 2011

2nd International conference on Advanced nano-materials and Nanotechnology (ICANN-2011) to be organised by the deptment of Physics & Centre for Nanotechnology, during December 7, 2011.

Editorial Team: Dr Abhijit Mitra, Dr Rakhi Chaturvedi, Dr K.V. Krishnan.Secretary (Ex-Officio):Mr. Dibyendu DebnathDesign and Compilation: Kheni Dhaval, Vikash Kumar, Srishti Bhutani

Contact Address of Alumni Newsletter Secretariat:Prof. Rafikul AlamProfessor In-ChargeAlumni Affairs & External RelationsIndian Institute of Technology GuwahatiGuwahati:781039, IndiaEmail:[email protected]

Phone:+91-361-2582181/82/83; Fax:+91-361-2690762

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