From the HoD's desk, on the occasion of the 61st convocation
Good afternoon. Padmashree Dr. Mohan
Kameshwaran, invitees, graduands, fellow faculty & staff members, students, Ladies and
Gentlemen, A hearty welcome to the Degree Distribution Program in our department. In Hindu
astrology, you are reborn in a 60-year cycle. True to it, as we step into the
61st convocation, our department’s name has transformed from AM to AMBE, the Department of
Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering department.
As I provide this report, let me start with a bang: the Big Bang. The past three years have seen as many as 9 young stars joining and adding greater shine to this already bright AMBE constellation. Yes. Dr. Swathi, Lakshminath, Kiran Raj, then Ganga, Kannabiran, Danny and now, Amit, Aditi and Shuvrangshu. I am sure they will have a great career ahead.
Prof. Ramasubba Reddy who has served this department for more than 3 decades has just retired. He is one faculty who made sure that this department boat stabilized in critical times. He served as the Head for the longest time which reflects the love the faculty of the department have for him. He must be happy witnessing the growth that the department is seeing after he handed the baton to his successors.
I am also excited to tell you that this is one of the very few Applied Mechanics departments that has withstood the test of time and is even thriving today with the unique distinction of being the only postgraduate department among all IITs and IISc put together.
Also, our department holds the unique distinction of being a postgraduate-only department. This greatly helps in ourpursuit of excellence in research. The department has continued to intensify its research activities in terms of quality and reliance and collaborations with industry & foreign universities.
The department focuses on academic activities in Interdisciplinary areas related to biomedical engineering, biological and bioinspired systems, fluid mechanics and solid mechanics. We offer three MTech programs: Computational and Experimental Mechanics, Biomedical Engineering and Clinical Engineering. An online MTech program on Computational Engineering is on the anvil. This is apart from the several Interdisciplinary Dual degree programs such as computational engineering, Biomedical engineering and complex systems that we currently coordinate and offer.
About 430 students and scholars have been on roll in our department, of which about 77 are MTech students, 127 MS Scholars, and 230 PhD scholars on roll the past year. About 17 of them are PM Research Fellows. In addition, there are about 10 postdoctoral fellows and a DST Senior Research Scientist. I am happy to inform you that 28 Mtech students, 25 MS scholars and 32 PhD scholars have completed their degree requirements in the last academic year. Wehave again broken the record for the maximum number of PhD degrees awarded by the dept. It has now become a trend that we beat our own record year after year.
We have been inducting more and more international students through international interdisciplinary master’s programs called i2mp. Recognizing the need for going the entrepreneurship way, MS in Entrepreneurship, spearheaded by Dr. Satya Seshadri, is continuing to attract many registrations.
Our faculty are also involved in joint doctoral degree programs with various universities such as the University of Melbourne and Swinburne univ in Australia, NTU Singapore and Aachen Tech University, in Germany, to name a few.
Currently, we boast of serving 38 permanent faculty members and 13 technical and administrative staff members.
Dr.Pandian has continued to serve as a visiting faculty last academic year. Thanks to him we have several initiatives and one notable one that will see a lot of involvement by the dept is the Human in Space program. He will continue as Professor of Practice in the coming year.
Professors, Bala Natarajan, Cemal Basaran, Steven Lavalle, Anita Mahadevan, President of SPIE, Dhanesh, Praneeth Chakravarthula and Ana Lavalle came on short visits working with different groups in our department.
We have more than 15 active adjunct faculty members from universities the world over engaged in collaborative research work with our faculty colleagues. Many of them are also co-guides of our research scholars. We also have several guest faculty members who complement our course offerings.
We have been constantly tuning our curriculum to keep up with recent trends in research, 8 new courses were proposed last academic year. Courses such as Life of Ubiquitous Materials: From Science to Behaviour, Carbon neutral energy technology, geometry and mechanics of materials – from hair curls to origami, flow visualization techniques, data-driven computational techniques and optimization, and simulations in solid mechanics are a sample few.
Our faculty members are also adding to the NPTEL materials that are sought after. This includes some of the online courses.
Prof. Arul Prakash was recognized for his teaching excellence in 2023 in the department. Dr. Kiran Raj was recognized as the best Young Scientist Speaker at the workshop on Interfacial Engg at Multiple spatiotemporal scales. Dr. Swathi received the Drug Delivery Fellowship award, a German and Indo-French research grant of 100K euros apart from many other grants. She also received the Vaibhav Fellowship.
Prof. Manivanan has been advancing leaps and bounds in the Human-Computer interaction space, creating waves all over. His dream is to see India lead in the AR/VR area. He has been setting up AR/VR centers all over the country for development and training in many organizations and Institutes. He is also involved in the Human in space program that ISRO is eager to forage into.
Prof. Satya Seshadri has been involved similarly in Energy technologies, setting up various establishments, consortiums and centers nationwide and forging international collaborations. IITM has an Energy consortium with about 10 industries participating in it.
Dr. Babji’s involvement in sports technology has spurred a lot of activities related to the same all over the nation.
Dr.Vengadesan, Dr. GangaPrasath, Dr. Ramakrishnan, Dr. Manivannan and several other faculty members have made it a point to visit many colleges and institutions to interact with the students, employees and faculty there, motivating them to do research.
At this juncture, I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that our faculty are drawn from backgrounds ranging from mechanical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, electrical and electronics engineering, biomedical engineering, Biotech, aerospace engineering, materials engineering, physics, etc. Unlike most other departments in this Institute, it naturally brings a multidisciplinary engineering-flavour to our department. One would rarely see such a combination in any university in any part of the world.
A variety of about 38 different labs we have reflects such a nature. Faculty members who have joined recently are embellishing our department with labs of more current focus, such as the Inspired lab, nanomolecular lab, interface lab, and flow visualization lab. Many more are being set up that will grow from strength to strength.
In the past few years, our faculty members, research scholars and project staff have reported their research findings viaabout 150 top-quality journal publications annually. This is apart from the equal or a greater number of conference publications and presentations. The citations have also seen a big spike. Prof. Arockiarajan and Prof. Ramakrishnan have been explosive in terms of the publication of papers last year.
Our research scholars are no less. Last
academic year alone, more than 20 of them received awards and recognitions in the meetings and
conferences such as best paper or poster awards etc.
In this convocation, the following are awarded Institute prizes: Pijush Patra gets the V Ramamurti award for the best PhD thesis in App Mech; Prof.S Radhakrishnan for the best PhD thesis award in BME goes to Ms Swetha Menon, Pijush Patra also bagged the Dr.V Ganesan dissertation award in thermo-fluid sciences. Swetha was also recognized with the GE Ecomagination Excellence Award; Anand Zambare, Vishnu, Pijush Patra and Nehal Dash received Institute Research Awards last year. Congratulations to them all.
Our faculty sit on various national boards and committees that foster quality research & nation-building such as Panels of DST, ARDB, and selection committees in various IITs-NITs-&other univs-national labs &corporates.
Many of our faculty members are on the editorial board of a large number of international refereed journals. The list is too long to read. They are also on advisory, steering, scientific and organizing committees of several national and international conferences.
Prof. Lakshmana Rao is the President of the Indian Society for Applied Mechanics (ISAM). Recently, Prof. Varadhan has been inducted as an editorial member of Scientific Reports while Prof. Abhijit as Associate Editor of Geophysical Research letters.
As a way of dissemination through networking, our faculty members and research scholars have attended several conferences and workshops and presented their research work.
Many conferences, symposia and colloquiums were conducted by our faculty last year. Perspectives in Nonlinear Dynamics 2023 organized by Prof. Sayan, Workshop on Medical Device Regulations and Standards by Prof. Ramakrishnan, Women in Optics and Photonics in India conference Jan 2024 organized by Prof. Sujatha and energy consortium related conferences, summits and workshops by Dr. Satya are just a few of them to mention.
There was a huge participation from our department in the recently held INCAM 2024 held at NIT Warangal with "Characterization and Monitoring Techniques in Traditional Medicine" and "Mechanics of Sports" as mini-symposia organized by Prof. Lakshmana Rao and his lab.
In the recent past, our department faculty are involved sponsored and Industrial research projects and Corporate Social Responsibility projects worth Rupees 71 crores. The projects include major nation-building initiatives, Make in India and startup grants. Various private and government agencies have awarded these projects including MHRD, DST, DBT, ISRO, ARDB, DRDO, DMRL, Ministry of Textiles, ICMR, Ministry of Education, National Supercomputing Mission, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, ARB, MHRD, ARC, Human Space flight center, HAL, Kotak Mahindra, APA Engineering, Vertiv Energy, Johnson controls, Aspire, GE, CSM, Mahindra, MTAR Technologies, Vishveshvaraih Museum, Pmanifold, Facebook, Caterpillar, SAIL, IOC, Novaris, Viking, Shell India, Pfizer, Appasamy Associates, Skanray Tech, Accenture, Gnanam Institute, Neurowyzr, Archean Chemicals, Lucas T.V.S. and many more.
Our faculty members are also actively engaged in a large number of centres-of-excellence projects as a part of the Institute of Eminence grant the Institute received.
Our faculty are keenly involved in social outreach. Some of them that come to my mind, Dr. Pijush’s Teach for India, Dr. Babji/Mahesh sports science initiative, Dr. Swathi’s project on circular economy and Dr. Satya’s Energy technology initiatives.
Some large-value pieces of equipment have been acquired this academic year. Some of them are Multimode Microplate Reader, Composites 3D printer, Magneto-sputtering system, High-speed camera, and Contact angle meter.
Tuberculosis detection techniques and PoC device, CAD system for diagnosis of brain disorder, real-time wearable emotion tracking system, preterm pregnancy monitoring wearable system, and software on digital photomechanics have been developed and are in various stages of commercialization.
We have collaborations with a stunning number of universities, organizations and Institutes. Close to 40 of them. It may take long to read out the list. Every one of them is important.
The Department of Applied Mechanics leads in the translational aspects of research. Our faculty members have filed close to 20 patents and in addition, about 20 have been granted so far. Our colleagues are leading from the front in terms of running their startups based on the ideas and innovations that emanate from their research labs. Our colleague, Dr Satya Seshadri is actively involved with NIRMAAN, a start-up nursery on campus.
As Dean of Alumni Affairs and Corporate Relations, Prof. Mahesh has achieved a milestone in alumni contributions to IIT Madras, the highest ever in the history of IIT Madras, surpassing the 500 crore mark in a fiscal year.
Active participation is seen among our faculty, staff and students in the Institute activities and extracurricular activities.
In another role, as Global Research Partnerships coordinator, Dr. Satya has created many connections between IITM and various International.
Our scholars and students are showing great
enthusiasm through activities under the Applied Mechanics Students Association
(AMSA). Last year saw several activities including industrial tours to
SHAR, Ashok Leyland, Daimler, etc. Research Palooza was organized recently, showcasing our
scholar's talents and keen involvement in research skills.
We have gems among our 13 administrative and
technical staff members in the department. Add 5 more who are Contractual. Without
their day-to-day support and diligence, all that I have reported so far, such success wouldn’t
have been possible. Mr. Parkkavan has been promoted to Senior
Assistant recently. Mr. Elango won the NASA elections again as joint secretary. Mr.
Karthik, Mr. Elango and Dr. Kiran Raj participated in staff inter-IIT sports. Mr.Elango often
goes beyond his call of duty to help with several activities of the department. The
diligence of Rama Madam is unparalleled. Kannan and Dillesh are remodelling the lab class
setups. The technical support provided by them including Veera, Karthik, Uday, has
greatly helped our research activities. Karthik’s enthusiasm for constantly helping in the
outreach activities is noteworthy. The all-pervasive Ranjan has always been there
assisting when we needed the most. Day and time have been only secondary. Lakshmi is
a phenomenon clearing stores files like a whiz. Not to mention of
assistance provided by Padma, Danny and Sharon. The list is long regarding support
activities from our technical and administrative staff members.
Another noteworthy observation is the work ethic and comradery among our department staff members. This has influenced even our contractual housekeeping staff. Daily you see Ms. Jayanthi and Ms Anusuya work like a Karma yogi in the corridors of our department.
I am also one of the most fortunate HoDs to have full cooperation from my faculty colleagues. Every single one of them takes part in some responsibility or the other of the department and delivers. Our department is considered one of the most cohesive departments in the Institute. Also, openness and a flat system of administration is our belief. We hope to sustain this feature of our department throughout.
Coming to our alumni, Our alumni are successfully pursuing careers in academia and industry alike. Some serve on faculty in IITs, NITs and other universities and as heads and scientists in R&D labs in India and abroad from the oldest to the youngest. Some of them have risen to the level of Deans. We will see Directors also among them.
On this occasion, on behalf of our faculty, staff and students, I sincerely thank the Director, the Registrar and IITMadministration for all the generous support extended to us. Thanks to our Chief Guest, Dr. Mohan Kameshwaran, for readily agreeing to grace the occasion on short notice. Many of us have accessed his expertise in ENT.
Graduands. We are very grateful for your involvement in our department's research, teaching and other activities. Wishing very bright careers and happy personal lives. I urge you all to stay connected with your alma mater lifelong. Our love goes out to you. We are in the process of creating several opportunities for such a sustained connection with our alumni.
Unknowingly, I could have missed or wrongly reported some information while reading this report. If so, please pardon me. Thanks for your patience in hearing this report which is rather long given the phenomenal work done in our department.
Joint degree program institutes:
University of Korea, SUNY, Buffalo, Drexel University, McGill University, UTS, Erasmus University, NTNU, Norway, Univ of Birmingham, DKFZ, University de Paris, Univ of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Bulgarian Academic Science, Kyushu Univ, University of Virginia, Kansas State Univ, University of Missouri, Kansas City, University of Sydney, Lublin University of Technology, Lodz University of Technology, University of Minnesota, Monash University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Hawaii, Cornell University, ENS de Lyon, France, Leeds University, UK, Universitat Bielefeld, Germany, Texas A&M Univ, McGill Univ, Lund Univ Sweden, Univ de Paris, Institute of Cancer Research, UK, Univ of Birmingham, Temple Univ.
