SPECIAL REPORT: ENGINEERS’ DAY

IIT Bombay celebrated National Engineers’ Day on September 15, paying tribute to the legendary engineer, statesman, and Bharat Ratna awardee, Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, on his birth anniversary. Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman of the National Educational Technology Forum (NETF); Executive Committee of National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC); National Board of Accreditation (NBA), and National Innovation Foundation (NIF), India, was the Chief Guest on the occasion.

During the event, the Institute conferred some of IIT Bombay’s most prestigious awards, including the International Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering and Technology, the Dr. P.K. Patwardhan Technology Development Award 2024, and the C1973 Faculty Award for Research Excellence, among others. These awards recognize path-breaking research and technological innovation, and are presented to outstanding faculty members and researchers of IIT Bombay.

International Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering and Technology

 

 

IIT Bombay proudly recognized two global leaders in research and innovation as the winners of the Institute’s prestigious IIT Bombay International Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering and Technology. This award was established in 2022 through the generous support of IITB alumnus Mr. Shantanu Rastogi (B.Tech., M.Tech., EE, Nanotechnology, 2002), and Mr. Sandeep Naik (Managing Director, Head of India and Asia Pacific, General Atlantic).

This year’s International Award for Excellence in Research in Engineering and Technology was jointly conferred on Prof. Madhavi Srinivasan and Prof. Chen Change Loy.

Prof. Madhavi Srinivasan, President’s Chair in Sustainability, and Executive Director, Energy Research Institute at NTU, Singapore

 

Prof. Madhavi Srinivasan, President’s Chair Professor at NTU Singapore, has pioneered innovations that translate materials science into real-world impact, including eco-friendly methods for recovering metals from lithium-ion batteries and the creation of structural batteries that store energy while bearing mechanical loads. She also serves as Executive Director of the Energy Research Institute in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, the NTU Sustainability Office, and is the Co-Director of SCARCE, a joint lab with CEA France on e-waste recycling.

 

Prof. Chen Change Loy, President’s Chair in Computer Science, and Deputy Director, Centre of AI-for-X, NTU Singapore

Prof. Chen Change Loy is the President’s Chair Professor at NTU Singapore and a leading researcher in AI and computer vision. His pioneering contributions in deep learning, particularly in image and video super-resolution, generative models, and visual recognition, have reshaped key subfields and led to widely adopted algorithms. He also serves as Deputy Director of the Centre for AI-for-X and is the Co-Director of the S-Lab for Advanced Intelligence.

As part of the Engineers’ Day celebrations, both the awardees delivered Colloquium Lectures on campus.

C1973 Faculty Awards for Research Excellence

The C1973 Faculty Awards for Research Excellence promote and recognize original research from young faculty at IIT Bombay. This initiative encourages faculty members to conduct and publish impactful research in peer-reviewed and globally reputed academic journals, thereby enhancing the visibility of IIT Bombay as a premier research-driven institute worldwide.

The awardees of the C1973 Faculty Awards for Research Excellence (FARE) for 2025 include:

  • Pennan Chinnasamy, Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas
  • Ratul Dasgupta, Department of Chemical Engineer
  • Arpita Mondal, Department of Civil Engineering
  • Biswabandan Panda, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
  • Siddhartha Tallur, Department of Electrical Engineering
  • Narendra Shiradkar, Department of Electrical Engineering
  • Swatantra Pratap Singh, Environmental Science and Engineering Department
  • Manoranjan Sahu, Environmental Science and Engineering Department
  • Pradip P. Kalbar, Environmental Science and Engineering Department
  • Deepak Marla, Department of Mechanical Engineering
  • Achintya Kumar Dutta, Department of Chemistry
  • Rahul Maitra, Department of Chemistry
  • Prabhakar Naraga, Department of Earth Sciences
  • Sourav Pal, Department of Mathematics
  • Pintu Parui, Department of Economics
  • Sudeep Bapat, Sailesh J. Mehta School of Management

 

Dr. P. K. Patwardhan Technology Development Award

The Dr. P. K. Patwardhan Technology Development Award for 2024 was conferred on Prof. Rajesh Zele and Dr. Vijay Kanchetla for their pioneering work on DhruvaPro – A Worldwide Navigational Receiver Chip for NAVIC, GPS, GALILEO, and BEIDOU.

Outstanding Young Engineer Award

The Outstanding Young Engineer Award 2024-25 was conferred upon Mr. Vinayak D. Bobade, Jr. (an engineer from the Estate office) for his outstanding contributions to the campus infrastructure development.