PRESS NOTE
ON
THE GRADUATING CLASS AND AWARD WINNERS
&
SOME SALIENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur has scheduled its XXXVI Convocation on May 28, 2004 at 1:30 PM. At this Convocation the degree Bachelor of Technology, Master Science (5-year Integrated), Master of Science (2-year), Master of Business Administration, Master of Technology, and Doctor of Philosophy will be conferred on those students who have successfully completed all requirements for the said degrees.

Dr. C N R Rao, FRS, Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Centre of Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, who is the Chairman of the Board of Governors of this Institute, will preside over the proceedings of the Convocation. A number of celebrities from academia, administration and industry along with the students receiving the degrees and their parents/ guardians among other guests will be present on this occasion.

The Institute has had a distinguished tradition of being graced on the occasions of this Convocation by well-known personalities and dignitaries from various fields such as education, research and development, industry, etc. Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, the doyen among educationists and a great philosopher, was the Chief Guest for its first Convocation held on October 31, 1965. At that time he was the president of India and Visitor of the Institute.

For this Convocation, Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy will be the Chief Guest and deliver the Convocation address.

The number of students to be awarded degrees at this Convocation is 597. This includes the award of B.Tech. degrees in various branches of engineering to 337 students, M.Sc. (5-year integrated) degrees to 27 students, and M.Sc. (2-year) degrees to 47 students in Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics. The MBA degrees will be awarded to 28 students. M.Tech. degrees will be awarded to 113 students in various branches of engineering. The highest degree of Doctor of philosophy will be awarded to 45 scholars.

Besides the award of degrees the institute will also award various medals and prizes for meritorious performance.

The PRESIDENT'S GOLD MEDAL

The DIRECTOR'S GOLD MEDAL

GENERAL PROFICIENCY MEDALS FOR BEST ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

B.Tech.

M. Sc. (Integrated)

 M. Sc. (2yr)

RATAN SWARUP MEMORIAL PRIZE

CADENCE GOLD MEDAL for best

PROFICIENCY PRIZES

        B.Tech.

M. Sc. (Integrated)

M. Sc. (2yr)

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES AWARDS

MARS G. FONTANA PRIZE

BANCO FOUNDATION PRIZE

PROF. ADIDAM SRI RANGA SAI MEMORIAL GOLD MEDAL

PROF. ADIDAM SRI RANGA SAI MEMORIAL SILVER MEDAL

CADENCE SILVER MEDAL

PROF. BAL DEVA UPADHYAYA MEMORIAL GOLD MEDAL

Established in 1960, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur is one of the seven Institutes of Technology set up in the country to foster development of high quality scientific and technological education comparable to the best in the world. In its continual endeavor to achieve excellence in both undergraduate and postgraduate education and research, it has earned a superb academic reputation in the global arena.

At the Bachelor’s level, IIT Kanpur has B.Tech. Programs in Aerospace, Biological Science and Bioengineering, Chemical, Civil, Computer Science, Electrical, Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering. The Institute also has integrated M.Sc. programs in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Statistics. The students for both B.Tech. and M.Sc. (Integrated) programs are selected through JEE and usually they are the country’s most accomplished ones. There are programs for M. Sc. (2 years) in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Statistics, where the students with B.Sc. (Hons.) background are chosen through a rigorous selection process, called JAM. IIT Kanpur runs M.Tech. Programs also in all the engineering branches. Besides, M. Tech. Programs in the interdisciplinary areas such as Nuclear Engineering, Biological Sciences and Bioengineering, Laser Technology, Environmental Engineering, Materials Science, and Industrial and Management Engineering are also available. M. Tech. Students are chosen through an all-India examination, called GATE. The Institute has also adopted a dual degree (B.Tech. - M. Tech) program. In this program, the students admitted through JEE, are expected to complete the M. Tech. Program in five years. At the end of five years, the student is awarded both B.Tech. and M.Tech. Degrees. Recently, two interdisciplinary programs have been introduced, namely, MBA and Master of Design. For these programs, the students are selected through the all-India examinations, JMET and CEED respectively. IIT Kanpur does have a vibrant PhD program in all the above academic areas as well as in Humanities and Social Sciences. The Department of Physics offers a M.Sc.-Ph.D. dual degree program, which allows their M.Sc. students to continue for a Ph.D. The M. Tech. and Ph.D. students receive research/ teaching assistantships.

IIT Kanpur has demonstrated its excellence in research in many areas. To cite a few areas: Finite Element Methods Using Domain Decomposition, Flow Induced Vibrations, Wind Tunnel Testing of Large Scale Prototypes, Computational Chemistry, Nano-materials and Nano-technology, Geometric Optimization of Large Organic Systems, Genomics and Bio-Informatics, Electronic Structure Calculations, Aggregation and Etching, Molecular Dynamics, Thin Film Dynamics, Optical / EM Field Calculations, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer, Computer Aided Design and Rapid Prototyping, Tomography, Robotics, Multi-Body Dynamics, Geo-seismic Prospecting, Stress Analysis and Composite Materials, Vibration and Control, Semiconductor Physics, Photonics, Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms, Impurities in Anti-Ferro Magnet, Raman Scattering, Spin Fluctuation in Quantum Magnets and so on.

The faculty and the students of IIT Kanpur continue to break new grounds in the forefront of research.  This has been duly recognized in the form of various Awards and Honors to the faculty and best paper awards to the students.  This year’s Bhatnagar Prize went to Dr Manindra Agrawal in the area of Mathematical Sciences and to Dr V Chandrasekhar in the area of Chemical Sciences. While Dr Manindra Agrawal and Dr Debashish Choudhury were elected Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, Dr Ashutosh Sharma was elected a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.  Drs Gautam Biswas, C Venkatesan, Ashutosh Sharma and Manindra Agrawal were elected Fellows of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. Dr Pankaj Jalote was elected a Fellow of IEEE, USA. Drs V Shankar and Anish Upadhyaya have been chosen for the Young Scientist Award of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.  Drs Sanjay Mittal of Aerospace Engineering and F A Khan of Chemistry department have been conferred the Swarna Jayanti Fellowship for 2003.

Thanks to the generosity and thoughtfulness of our Chairman, we have been able to institute a CNR Rao Lecture Series.  This recognizes an outstanding researcher from within the Institute and this year such an honor is bestowed on Dr Ashutosh Sharma of Chemical Engineering department.

I would like to mention here that IIT Kanpur continues to provide leadership in both technical education and also in research and development in the country. While Dr Krishna Kumar of Aerospace Engineering has been appointed the Director of MNNIT, Allahabad, Dr T K Chandrashekar of Chemistry department has been appointed Director of Regional Research Laboratory, Thiruvananthapuram.  

A team of young and energetic scientists and engineers is working towards excellence in the newly founded Biological Sciences and Bioengineering Department. The quality of research carried out there is already being recognized through liberal grants from the Wellcome Trust to Drs K Subramaniam and Balaji Prakash.  It should mentioned that yet another young faculty member Dr Debabrata Goswami of Chemistry department has also been conferred the Wellcome Trust grant.

The Institute has received approval for the Technology Mission on Railway Safety from the Government of India.  Railways, MHRD and IIT Kanpur will participate in the scheme along with the industry.  IIT Kanpur will co-ordinate the entire programme worth Rs 30 crores.

With the aim of bringing the benefits of information and communication design technologies to farmers and traders of agriculture commodities in this region, the Kanpur- Lucknow hub of Media Lab Asia has established a Digital Mandi and an experimental wireless VOIP phone based PCO extension counter at a nearby village.  Technology developed at the Resource Center for Indian Languages has been transferred to eight centers for machine aided translation from English to Oriya, Bengali, Marathi, Assamese, Manipuri, Konkani, Urdu, Punjabi, Malayalam and Sanskrit. Software code compliance tool and software test coverage analyzer developed at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering have been commercialized by the Center for Reliability, Chennai, a laboratory of Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

To strengthen the research infrastructure, the Institute has procured a large number of new equipment:  laser scattering particle size analyzer, coincidence Doppler positron annihilation radiation system; drill core scanner for magnetic susceptibility & natural gamma ray measurements;  high pressure thin layer chromatography system;  optical spectrum analyzer;  3-D surface profilometer to characterize material surfaces;  gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer system equipment and an affymetrix scanner.  FEI Quanta 200HV Scanning Electron Microscope with EDS and EBSD attachment.  The electron paramagnetic resonance system procured last year under FIST from the Department of Science and Technology has been commissioned. As a recent initiative, the Institute has set-up a new `4i Laboratory with the objective of facilitating design evolution into complete products.  This facility is equipped with a CNC vertical milling center, CNC turning center, fused deposition modeling, rapid prototyping, and abrasive water jet cutting machine.  The SIDBI center for incubation is already operational.  The SAMTEL R & D building and is now fully functional.

IIT Kanpur will continue to harness new technology and strive for furtherance of knowledge. With the globalization, IIT Kanpur will become the destination of the scholars from all over the globe.

Prof. Sanjay. G. Dhande

Director

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur