Newsdigest for the IITD Alumni Association

1. Outstanding Contribution to National Development

Dear Friends,

IIT Delhi Alumni Award

for

Outstanding Contribution to National Development

The IIT Delhi Alumni Award for Outstanding Contribution to National Development was instituted in 1999 to honour nominated and selected IIT Delhi Alumni. The award is conferred each year by the IIT Delhi Alumni Association on one or more alumni at its Annual General Meeting. It consists of a plaque and a citation

The Purpose:

• To recognize outstanding contribution of IIT Delhi alumni to National development.
• To enhance the awareness of achievement and contributions of IIT Delhi alumni in various aspect of national development.
• To develop greater networking and interaction with outstanding IIT Delhi alumni to further enrich the activities of IIT Delhi Alumni Association.

Selection Criteria:

• Exceptional achievement and excellence in the chosen field.
• Leadership role / Role Model Status.
• Impact on national development.
• Contribution in developing of talent.
• Pioneering effort.
• Commitment to ethics and values.

On behalf of the Selection Committee for the award, I have the pleasure to invite you to nominate one (or more) IIT Delhi alumnus who in your opinion has made outstanding contribution to national development, and should be considered for the prestigious award. All those who have obtained a degree from IIT Delhi are eligible.

The nominations may be sent by email / Post / Courier/ fax.

Kindly send the nominations in the enclosed format; together with a summary of his/her distinguished achievements/contributions. It would be helpful

if you would also send to us a resume of the nominee. Please feel free to contact me if you need further information in this regard.

We would appreciate your early response but the last date for receipt of nominations is 15^th February 2007.

A list of the previous awardees is enclosed.

With regards,

Yogesh Andlay
President, IITDAA

___________________________________________________________________________

FORMAT FOR NOMINATION FOR IITD ALUMNI AWARD FOR

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Name of the nominee:

IIT Delhi Degree (s):

Current position/ title:

Nominee address, phone, fax, email address:

Brief sketch of nominee’s career and achievements:

Proposed by:

Name:

Signature:

Address, phone, fax, email address:

Kindly send nomination to:

The Convenor, Selection Committee

“Outstanding Contribution to National Development”

IIT Delhi Alumni Association
Nalanda House,
Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110 016
Tel: 2686 8523/2659 7178/2659 6953
Fax: 2651 4177
E-mail: iitdaa@gmail.com or office@iitdalumni.com
___________________________________________________________________________

In the past, this Award has been conferred upon:

1999-2000
Dr. Kiran Bedi, Indian Police Service
Mr. Pradeep Gupta, MD, Cyber Media (
India) Ltd.

2000-2001
Mr. Rohit Chand, Executive Chairman, IT&T Ltd.
Mr. Vijay Mahajan, MD, BASIX
Mr. Arjun Vinoo Caprihan, President, Caprihan Interscience
Mr. Nabankur Gupta,Group President & Wholetime Director, Raymond Group of Companies.

2001-2002
Dr. A.K. Chakravarti, Advisor Ministry of IT
Mr. Satish Tandon, MD, Alfa Laval (India) Ltd.
Dr. E.A.S. Sarma, IAS,
Mr. Prabhat Agarwal, CEO, Parsec Technologies
Dr. Satya Narayana Dasa, Chairman, Jiva Inst.of Vaisnava Studies

2002-2003
Dr. Prem Vrat, Ex-Director, IIT Roorkee
Mr. Satish K. Manocha, Chairman & Managing Director, ITI Limited
Mr. Ashok K. Manchanda, Director, NUCON Engineers Pvt. Ltd.
Mr. Surya Kant, Vice President, TCS

2004-05

Mr. Yogeshwar Kumar, Senior Consultant, DST & IREP

Mr. Pravin Kumar Purang, President & CEO, Global Consulting Associates.

Prof. Trilochan Sastry, Professor, IIM, Bangalore

Mr. Navyug Mohnot, Chief Executive Officer, QAI India

2005-06

Rear Admiral Ravinder Mohan Bhatia, Chairman & MD, Mazagon Dock Limited, Mumbai, (Retired on 31^st December, 2005)

Mr. Yogesh Kumar Singhal, Project Director, GSAT-2/Project Director, INSAT-4A

Dr. Ramesh Awasthi, Co-Convenor & Trustee of MASUM

Prof. Denis Therien, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations), McGill University, on his visit to the Institute on 23rd November 2006.

His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, KG,KCVO,ADC, UK Special Representative for International Trade & Investment on his visit to the Institute on 30th October 2006.

Prof. Ryoji Noyori, Nobel Laureate (Chemistry), President RIKEN and Professor, Chemistry Department, Nagoya University, Japan. Prof. Ryoji Noyori visited the Institute on 30th October 2006.

Dr. Arden Bement, Director, National Science Foundation, USA Dr. Arden Bement visited the Institute on 16th October 2006.

Click here for more information

4. Dr. S. S. Kapdi,Ph.D., 2006, Innovative Student Projects Award – 2006

Dr. S. S. Kapdi, has been awarded Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in convocation on August 12, 2006. His thesis on “Development of Biogas Enrichment and Compression System for Rural Energy Applications” has been selected for Innovative Student Projects Award - 2006 by Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), New Delhi. For this, he has been facilitated by a medal, a certificate and a prize of Rs.10,000/- by the INAE on 09/12/2006 during annual meeting of the academy at Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi110 002.

Dr. S. S. Kapdi is presently serving as Associate Professor & Head, Department of Bio-Energy, P.G. Institute of Food Processing Technology & Bio-Energy, Anand Agricultural University, Anand.

5.Shashi Tharoor wrote an interesting op-ed article on Brand IIT

The success story of 'Brand IIT'

The New Year is always a time to look forward, and few subjects warrant as optimistic a look to the future as Indian science and technology. Living as I am these days in the US, I have had the particular pleasure of seeing some of the prospects first hand, having been asked to address a global gathering of IIT alumni in Mumbai just before Christmas.

Demographic projections suggest that the next US Census will find more Indian-Americans than American Indians. When I was admitted to an American graduate school in 1975, not too many history honours students were making the journey to America.

Already, though, our counterparts at India's elite technological universities and engineering colleges - especially those from the Indian Institutes of Technology or IITs - had begun to snap up the fellowships that American munificence provided. They went on to form the creative backbone of the global information revolution with their quick minds and developed crucial innovations that changed the way Americans live.

IITians dominate what Americans call the ''honour roll''. Arun Netravali, former president of Bell Laboratories, received the Presidential Medal of Technology for pioneering the technology which enabled high definition television, HDTV and Internet streaming-videos.

Raj and Neera Singh, an entrepreneurial couple, pioneered the use of cell-phone and pager technology in 40 countries. Mohamed Zaidi, as president of Alcoa in Germany, pioneered the first aluminum-based automobiles for various models of Audi, Mercedes, Jaguar, Volvo and Porsche. Dr Mani Bhaumik invented the cold laser technique which is used for laser eye surgery machines and has benefited over 15 million patients worldwide. Padma Warrior as CTO of Motorola is creating more affordable mobile phones for the Indian rural markets. (These stars and many more - 101 global IITians in all - will be featured in a book by IIT alumnus Ranjan Pant, to be published early 2007)

The success of these IITians and several thousand more transformed the image of their homeland and its people. To the American mind, the stereotypical Indian is no longer a snake charmer but a software guru. For an aspiring Indian, nothing succeeds like the success of your compatriots. Today, an Indian student with decent grades has a better-than-ever chance of admission to an American university of his or her choice, with a substantial scholarship.

This blossoming of the Indian diaspora has happened because of seeds sown decades ago by the founders of great institutions like the IITs. When I wrote a short biography of Jawaharlal Nehru (Nehru: the Invention of India, 2003), I became conscious of the extent to which we have taken for granted one vital legacy of his: the creation of an infrastructure for excellence in science and technology, which has become a source of great self-confidence and competitive advantage for India today.

Nehru was always fascinated by science and scientists. He made it a point to attend the annual Indian Science Congress every year, and he gave free rein (and taxpayers' money) to scientists in whom he had confidence to build high-quality institutions. Men like Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai constructed the platform for Indian accomplishments in the fields of atomic energy and space research; they and their successors have given India a scientific establishment without peer in the developing world.

Nehru's establishment of the IITs (and the spur they provided to other institutions like Birla Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management) have produced many of the finest minds in America's Silicon Valley and Fortune-1000 Corporations. Today, an IIT degree is held in the same reverence in the US as one from MIT or Caltech. The next step is for IITians in India and IITians abroad to strengthen their bonds at events such as this month's conference in Mumbai to help combine their intellectual talents, resources and skills to help each other expand into each other's markets.

One can imagine IIT alumni abroad enhancing opportunities for their businesses by partnering with Indian companies led by IITians here, and vice-versa. Such ''IIT alumni to IIT alumni trade'' could apply to many industries and even to higher education, where IIT alumni professors from Indian institutions and those attending from abroad can plan to exchange students and faculty and collaborate across borders on research. IITians should take advantage of events like this one in Mumbai and other IIT events which are now being held globally with increasing frequency (such as the meetings planned for California in the summer and in Tokyo next fall) to pursue such collaboration.

India's extraordinary emergence in new-age industries - software, Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing - is the indirect result of Jawaharlal Nehru's faith in scientific education. Nehru left India with the world's second-largest pool of trained scientists and engineers, integrated into the global intellectual system, to a degree without parallel outside the developed West.

His legacy is not one we can afford to be complacent about. After all, the roots of Indian science and technology go far deeper than Nehru. The Rig Veda asserted that gravitation held the universe together 24 centuries before the apple fell on Newton's head. The Vedic civilisation subscribed to the idea of a spherical earth at a time when everyone else, even the Greeks, assumed the earth was flat. And yet, we lost the global lead in science and technology for over a millennium.

This New Year's, it is time to resolve that we will never allow ourselves to slip behind again. That will require resources - serious money for research, world-class lab facilities. But above all it will require one commodity India is not short of - brains (and the determination to use them). ''Brand IIT'' has shown the way. In 2007, we must start to scale this up to the point where one day ''Brand India'' becomes synonymous not with cheap products or services but with the highest standards of scientific and technological excellence.

# posted by IIT Delhi Alumni Association @ 3:45 PM