Alumnus Awards

Dr Desh Deshpande’s career is an eminent example of a leader’s self-confidence combined with creativity paying rich professional dividends.

Dr Deshpande graduated from IIT-Madras in 1973 with a B Tech in Electrical Engineering ; he obtained his Master’s degree from the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and then taught for sometime at the Queens University in Kingston, Canada, which also awarded him a Ph.D for his seminal work in the area of Data Communications.

With his ingenuity and penchant for hardwork, Dr Deshpande moved across senior management positions at Codex Corporation, a subsidiary of Motorola, and in eight years learnt his ropes for sailing in the rough seas of the business world and free-market economy. Though still in his thirties, he had acquired a rare blend of academic excellence with business experience and the courage to launch on his own. In 1988, Dr Deshpande co-founded the Coral Network Corporation, and left it in 1990 to start his own Cascade Communications Corporation.

Cascade Communications Corporation is a translation of reality into vision. Dr Deshpande had to replace the wide area network with a new public global access system. The Corporation began with no revenue and only one employee in 1991, but driven by the ambition of Dr Deshpande, it grew into a corporation of 900 people and an annual sales of million. In 1997, within six years, Cascade became attractive enough to be taken over for more than three and a half billion US dollars.

Dr Deshpande has been the subject of several business and trade press articles. His vision, ambition and hard work have also got him several honours and awards. In 1995, Dr. Deshpande was judged to be the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’, and in 1996 Communication Week listed him as one of the “Visionaries of the Industry” for his contribution to the growth and development of digital communication. The same year he was also named among the top 25 “Technology Drivers shaping the business style of the future”.

Creating jobs and wealth is only one aspect of Dr Deshpande’s achievements. He is a fine example for the motto of his Alma Mater – “siddhir bhawati karmajaa”.

Shri S Gopalakrishnan represents a generation of engineer-scientists who have made India a global player in software industry.

Shri Gopalakrishnan joined this Institute in 1975, and graduated four years later with an M Sc in Physics and an M Tech in Computer Science. He had the foresight to join the computer industry at a time when it was still nascent in India and thus be at a place which others would seek much later. In 1979, he started his career as a Software Engineer with the Patni Computer Systems and soon rose to be its Assistant Project Manager. He was responsible for developing the distributed process control system for the LD converter at the Rourkela Steel Plant.

After this formative experience, Shri Gopalakrishnan had a fair idea of the shape of things to come and of how a human resource-rich country like India could dominate software industry world-wide. In an act of supreme courage, Gopalakrishnan in 1981 left a career of success and endless pampering and perks for the uncharted waters of small-scale enterprise in an industry whose future then seemed rosy only in simulation.

That year, along with his friends, he launched the Infosys Technologies Ltd., and Kris, as he is called by his friends, assumed the responsibility in vital areas of design, development, implementation and support of information systems for clients in the consumer products industry in the United States of America. He was also instrumental in forming a joint venture, called KSA / Infosys with the KSA group of Atlanta, heading its operations division as Vice President.

In 1994 Shri Gopalakrishnan returned to India as the Deputy Managing Director of his company to head its software services and technology divisions. Never one to say no, his areas of active interest include operating systems, distributed computing and distributed software development. He is a member of the ACM, IEEE and IEEE Computer Society, and he frequently lectures in India and abroad on software quality and productivity.

It is the likes of Shri Gopalakrishnan who give India the precious reassurance that its investment in human resources are amply justified.

Shri V Shyam Sunder belongs to that small distinguished class of techno-managers who have made public sector industrial units competitive even in a free market economy.

After graduating from this institute in 1969 with a first class BTech degree in Chemical Engineering, Shri Shyam Sunder went to the University of Leeds where in 1978 he obtained the Master’s degree in Management Studies. In 1981 he obtained his second Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Madras. Four years later, he also obtained a Diploma in Computer Management from the University of Bombay.

Shri Shyam Sunder’s professional career began in 1970 as a Management Trainee in the Indian Oil Corporation, and rising through Operations, Management Services, Shipping, Planning and LPG departments and various ranks of the public sector oil industry in India. He has been the Chairman & Managing Director of the Madras Refineries Ltd., since last year.

A member of several national and international bodies in oil industry, some of the major successes of Shri Shyam Sunder have been the formulation of the Kandla – Bhatinda Product Pipeline within cost limits, formulation of a highly profitable marketing strategy for his company, creation of Indian Additives Ltd, a joint venture between MRL and M/s Chevron Chemical Corporation Ltd of the USA., formulation of a marketing strategy for higher growth, publication for the first time of the First Corporate Plan of the Division, and completion of the petroleum gas bottling plants at Vijayawada and Calicut, to mention but a few.

Though widely travelled world-wide, Shri Shyam Sunder has preferred Indian public sector industry to other offers. This kind of loyalty to the company and to the country is rather unusual today, but it is this patriotic fervour that has made Shri Shyam Sunder the natural leader and spokesman of oil industry in India.

The Distinguished Alumnus Award for the year 1998 is being awarded to Professor K.R. Rajagopal for his outstanding contributions to theoretical modeling in the broad field of non-linear mechanics; especially for his brilliant use of mathematics in the elucidation of a variety of phenomena in the areas of non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, turbulence, large deformations of solids, viscoelasticity, electro and magnetorheology, mixtures, biomaterials, and shape memory alloys.

Professor Rajagopal earned a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1973, an M.S. from IIT Chicago in 1974, and a Ph.D. in Mechanics from the University of Minnesota in 1978. In 1982, Prof. Rajagopal moved to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh as the James T MacLeod Professor of Engineering, Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and simultaneously became Professor of Surgery in the School of Medical and Health Sciences – an eloquent testimony to his extraordinary academic virtuosity. Since 1996, Prof. Rajagopal is the occupant of the prestigious Forsyth Chair in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Texas A & M University.

Professor Rajagopal has been a Visiting Professor Scientist at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in France, the Universita di Roma and the Universita di Ferrara in Italy, the Macromolecular Research Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at the National Bureau of Standards in Maryland. He has been a Consultant for many organizations: the UNDP, the Morgantown Energy Technology Center, the Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Rhone-Poulenc, France.

He is currently on the Editorial Boards of nearly twenty journals: the Archives for Rational Mechanics and Analysis, the International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, and the International Journal of Engineering Analysis and Design, to name only a few. He is also the General Editor for MacMillan Texts in Mathematics and Physics, and is on the Editorial Board of the Birkhauser Series on Modelling and Simulation in Science, Engineering and Technology. Prof. Rajagopal was the recipient of the Board of Visitors Faculty Award of the University of Pittsburgh in 1987 and the President’s Distinguished Research award in 1991. He was the Chairman of the Society for Natural Philosophy and is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“Always question authority” perhaps best describes Prof. Rajagopal’s approach to life and research. In research, this attitude combined with his great intellectual integrity, has paid rich dividends. He has dared to tackle unsolved problems that others shy away from, found new solutions to classical problems, and developed new theories in the face of contrary opinion. Professor Rajagopal has published over 200 refereed papers, written 3 books and edited 3 others. Nineteen students have received their Ph.D. degrees under his guidance. Indeed in awarding him the Distinguished Alumnus Award this year, IIT Madras honours itself.

Dr Jalaiah Unnam’s contributions to metal-matrix composites, and X-ray diffraction have won him several awards from NASA Langley Research and Development Park in Hampton, Virginia, USA, and other organizations.

Dr Unnam graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras with a Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgy (1970), and earned the Master’s and the Ph.D. degrees in Materials Engineering and Science from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Dr Unnam is the President and CEO of Analytical Services & Materials, Inc (AS&M), located in the Langley Research and Development Park in Hampton, Virginia. This Company is a big asset to Langley Research Centre and employs 165 Scientists and Engineers. This company has given critical help to the Langley Research Centre in R&D areas like the redesign and analysis of the wind Tunnel fan blades, the Shuttle solid rocket booster, the National Aerospace Plane Program engine and airframe concept reviews and the laminar flow control Supercritical Airfoil Experiments.

In 1989 NASA gave him an award “in recognition of his outstanding performance, entrepreneurial spirit, and unique commitment in providing support to the National Aeronautical and Space Administration”.

Professor Subra Suresh has made outstanding contributions to the study of mechanical behaviour of materials.

Prof Suresh is R.P. Simmons Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the Co-Director of the MIT-Harvard program on Modelling of Materials.

He received the degree of Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1977, in Mechanical Engineering, M.S. from Iowa State University in 1979, and Sc.D from M.I.T. in 1981.

He is the current Chair of the Executive Committee, Materials Division ASME. He is also the Principal Editor of the journals Acta/Scripta Materialia, an Associate Editor of Materials Science and Engineering A, and a Series Editor for the Cambridge University Press State Science Series.

Dr Suresh has won a number of awards that include “The Presidential Young Investigator Award” from NSF in 1985 for outstanding contributions to the understanding of fatigue and fatigue crack growth. Recently he has been invited to one of the six Swedish National Chairs in Engineering by the National Science Foundation for the period 1996-98.

Dr Suresh has been interested in quantitative investigations of the microscopic and macroscopic aspects of mechanical behaviour of metals, ceramics, thin films, piezoelectric materials and composites. He is the author/coauthor of 150 articles in journals and conference proceedings, and is the co-editor of five books. He is a co-inventor in five US and International patent applications, several of which have been licensed by a major international corporation for commercial development. He has written a book entitled Fatigue of Materials which was printed by Cambridge University Press and translated into Chinese.

Sri B. Muthuraman, Vice President (Project, Gopalpur) has contributed to the Iron and Steel industry in a major way.

He studied Metallurgy at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and joined the Tata Iron and Steel Co. Ltd in 1966. He had a successful stint in the plant and was closely associated with Tata Steel’s three million tonne expansion programme. He had a long and illustrious association with their Marketing and Sales Division which culminated in his reaching the highest position of Vice President (Marketing and Sales) in 1993-94.

In 1995, Mr. Muthuraman was given charge of planning for Tata’s prestigious new mega steel plant at Gopalpur, as the Vice President (Project, Gopalpur). This has been one of his most challenging assignments with Tata Steel.

Mr. Muthuraman’s contributions in the last three decades have been exemplary in terms of the leadership which he has provided not only in creating new markets but also in strategic and operational initiatives which he has taken to enhance the values provided to the customers. He has kept abreast of technological developments in iron and steel and has used his intimate knowledge in this area to the steel production in India.

He has also participated in the world’s top most steel forums. He was the President of the Alloy Steel Producers Association a couple of years ago and has recently become the Chairman of CII-Eastern Region, Orissa State Committee.

Mr. Ram V. Tyagarajan has made considerable contributions to the growth of Indian Industries and in particular to the Sugar Industry. He is the current Chairman and Managing Director of Thiru Arooran Sugars Limited, Madras, India.

He graduated from this Institute in 1972 in Chemical Engineering and obtained a Master’s degree from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US in 1974. He has managerial experience of over twenty years, including a long stint (1974-82) with Strategic Planning Associates, a reputed management consulting firm in the US, where he was a Senior Vice President before returning to India.

Mr. Tyagarajan has served as President of the Indian Sugar Mills Association for two consecutive terms, from 1987 to 1989. He has also been the President of the Sugar Technologists’ Association of India from 1991 to 1993. Currently, he is on the Board of Directors of a number of reputed companies and is actively involved in various industrial associations.

Mr. Tyagarajan was a member of the High Power Committee on Sales Tax Reforms set up recently by the Government of Tamilnadu. He is also chairing the working group of the Sugar Industry constituted by the Govt. of Tamilnadu to formulate development plans for the Ninth Plan period. Recently he has been nominated to the Board of Governors of the School of Energy, Bharathidasan University.

Dr. Krishnadas Nair has led our Country’s path-breaking efforts in Aviation Metallurgy, showing the way to self-reliance in this field.

Dr.Nair graduated from this Institute in 1964, with a Bachelor of Technology in Metallurgical Engineering, and followed it up with M.Sc and Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. After a brief stint as Assistant Professor at Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal, he went to the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom for Post Doctoral studies in Industrial Metallurgy. He joined the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore in 1971, and worked in various capacities in its Research & Development, Design and Production Departments. In 1988, he was appointed Managing Director of the Bangalore Complex of HAL.

Winner of several awards, Visiting Member of the Faculty of Universities in many countries, Fellow and Member of many professional bodies, and Founder Member of the Materials Research Society of India, Dr.Nair has contributed significantly to the indigenization of materials and technologies for the aircraft industry. High-strength aluminium alloys and special-quality steels were developed to international specifications and their production technology was standardized under his leadership. He has also made significant contributions to the development of light-weight magnesium alloys, titanium alloys and composite materials used in the castings for Jaguar Aircraft, Chetak and Cheetah Helicopters, and most recently in advanced light helicopters.

Dr. Nair has published more than 150 papers on Metallurgical Engineering and Management, focusing on the forging and creation of alloys not available to aviation industry so far. His contributions are particularly valuable in a field which has one of the highest growth potential world-wide in the coming years.