This is an award instituted by an alumnus Dr.P.Balasubramanian (1971/ BT/ AE,1973/ MT/ IM) for recognizing young faculty who have done well in research and have been good teachers in the courses. Three awards would be given for faculty in two categories - two for faculty in Engineering departments and the other for faculty in Sciences, Humanities & Social Sciences and Management Studies. The award would include a citation and a cash award of Rs 25000/-.
Suggested guidelines for awarding the YFRA to a faculty member are:
Mitesh M. Khapra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras. While at IIT Madras he plans to pursue his interests in the areas of Deep Learning, Multimodal Multilingual Processing, Dialog systems and Question Answering. Prior to that he worked as a Researcher at IBM Research India. During the four and half years that he spent at IBM he worked on several interesting problems in the areas of Statistical Machine Translation, Cross Language Learning, Multimodal Learning, Argument Mining and Deep Learning. This work led to publications in top conferences in the areas of Computational Linguistics and Machine Learning. Prior to IBM, he completed his PhD and M.Tech from IIT Bombay in Jan 2012 and July 2008 respectively.
His PhD thesis dealt with the important problem of reusing resources for multilingual computation. During his PhD he was a recipient of the IBM PhD Fellowship and the Microsoft Rising Star Award. He is also a recipient of the Google Faculty Research Award, 2018.
Janakiraman Viraraghavan received his Ph.D. degree in very large scale integration (VLSI) from the Electrical Communication Department, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 2010. He joined the Semiconductor Research and Development Center, IBM India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore, where he was involved in the design of embedded DRAM in 14 nm for early technology qualification and later led them embedded non-volatile memory development at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Bangalore, India. He joined the Electrical Engineering Department, IIT Madras, Chennai, India, as an Assistant Professor, in 2016 and his current research interests include statistical analysis in VLSI and ASIC implementation of machine learning algorithms on hardware.
Dr. Ananth Krishnan,Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Mdaras. He did his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Texas Tech University, 2010. His areas of interest are Sensors, Plasmonics, Microscopy.
Dr. Sarang Sane obtained his B.Stat. (Hons.) and M.Stat. degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute and his Ph.D. from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. He was an Adams visiting assistant professor in the University of Kansas from 2011 to 2014 and after a very brief stint as a DST INSPIRE faculty fellow at IISc, he joined the mathematics department in IIT Madras in 2015. Thanks to his rather diverse mathematical training, he is interested in most areas of mathematics, probability and statistics. His current research interests are more algebraic and are particularly related to category theory, the notion of support and its connection with singularities.
After receiving his B.Tech & M.Tech (Dual Degree) in Aerospace Engineering in 2007, Sivaram Ambikasaran joined Stanford University to obtain his Ph.D. in Computational and Mathematical Engineering in 2013. At Stanford, he received the Centennial Teaching Award for outstanding teaching in the School of Engineering. From September 2013 to May 2015, he was an Assistant Professor (Courant Instructor) at the Courant Institute, New York. Subsequently, he received the INSPIRE faculty award from the Department of Science & Technology, India and was a faculty from July 2015 to March 2016 at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, before moving to the wonderful Indian Institute of Science as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computational and Data Science in April 2016. In September 2017, he decided to move to Chennai to be with his partner in crime. He is also a recipient of the Young Scientist Research Award from the Department of Atomic Energy, India. His broad area of research is in computational and applied mathematics with a strong focus on constructing highly accurate fast algorithms leveraging approximation theory and numerical linear algebra.
Dr. Kameswararao Anupindi received his Ph.D. from the School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University in 2013. He finished his M. Tech. and B. Tech. degrees from IIT Kanpur and JNTU College of Engineering Kakinada, respectively. He worked as a developer on the FLUENT project at ANSYS FLUENT India from 2006 to 2009. He also worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Prior to joining IIT Madras he was a Research Fellow in the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics Research Group at the University of Southampton.
His research interests include hybrid turbulence modelling for internal and external flows, bio-fluid dynamics studies in healthy and pathological arteries together with medical devices. He is interested in developing and applying in-house and open-source computational fluid dynamics software to conduct the simulations.
Dr. Ashwin Joy joined in Nov, 2015. Since then he has been a faculty member in the Department of Physics. He did his Ph.D. work under the supervision of Prof. R. Ganesh at IPR Gandhinagar and was a post doctoral fellow for a couple of years at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel where he worked with Prof. Itamar Procaccia. Prior to joining IITM, he was also a DST INSPIRE faculty fellow at IPR, Gandhinagar.
His research focus lies mainly in the area of statistical physics and fluid turbulence.
Karthik was nominated for YFRA on the basis of excellent course evaluations in three different courses over the last three years, well-cited research publications in international journals and an edited book. Karthik is a PI on a DBT-funded project and co-PI on an Indo-Finland initiative in synthetic biology, and has initiated several interdisciplinary collaborative projects at IITM.
Karthik's 17 papers have over 750 citations in all (650+ in the last five years). Some of Karthik's algorithms and models have been instrumental in advancing systems-level understanding of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the tubercular pathogen. Karthik has also written two well-cited reviews in systems biology and was recently invited to contribute a chapter to the comprehensive 3-volume Handbook on Computational Biology, published by Chapman & Hall/CRC. Karthik's most recent work at IITM, in the area of computational systems biology/biological network analysis has also been published in high-impact journals in the field.
Karthik Raman has made significant contributions to the field of systems biology and biological network modelling over the last 10 years. During his doctoral research in the lab of Prof. Nagasuma Chandra, Indian Institute of Science, Karthik applied various mathematical modelling techniques to study the metabolic and protein interaction networks of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB). Karthik published the first ever detailed curated mathematical model of the unique mycolic acid pathway in Mtb. This work has been well cited (150+ citations) and laid an important foundation for the curation of genome-scale metabolic models of Mtb by leading research groups in systems biology. Karthik also performed a systematic analysis of every protein in Mtb, assessing their suitability as drug targets, by means of various computational analyses (130+ citations). Karthik's analyses elucidated the effectiveness of known drug targets, suggested their possible side effects, and also suggested several new targets for anti-TB drugs.
During his post-doctoral stint at the lab of Prof. Andreas Wagner, University of Zürich, Karthik studied the robustness and evolvability of complex biological systems, such as the TOR signalling network in yeast, as well as man-made digital logic circuits. By navigating a very large space (1045) of possible circuits and the functions they compute (≈1019), Karthik and Wagner showed that properties important for the evolvability of biological systems exist in digital logic circuitry as well. Further, they showed that it is possible to design robust and evolvable digital circuits, much in the same way Nature has evolved robust and evolvable signalling, metabolic or regulatory circuits. They also point to generic ways to generate fault-tolerant, adaptable and evolvable electronic circuitry, with applications in synthetic biology as well.
As a principal investigator at the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras, Karthik and his group have continued to work in the area of biological network modelling, focusing mostly on metabolic networks, with industrial applications in metabolic engineering and identification of combinatorial drug targets. In a recent study, Karthik and his MS student (in collaboration with Shankar Balachandran, CSE, IITM) devised an efficient algorithm to identify synthetic lethal genes in metabolic networks. Synthetic lethals are combinations of genes that when removed simultaneously abolish the growth of an organism â€" they are important in identifying combinatorial drug targets and novel interactions. Using an elegant extension to the established method of Flux Balance Analysis, they eliminated large portions of the search space for lethals, to rapidly identify synthetic lethals in many pathogenic organisms. Karthik and his PhD student also analysed 99 published metabolic networks, illustrating the shortcomings of various published metabolic networks, and recommended a set of standards to be adhered to in the systems biology community, for more effectively reconstructing metabolic models. Karthik's group comprises 4 PhDs and 2 MS students; he has mentored 15 undergraduates for thesis projects.
In 2014, Karthik co-edited a book on "A Systems Theoretic Approach to Systems and Synthetic Biology" in two volumes, together with Dr. Vishwesh Kulkarni (University of Warwick, UK) and Dr. Guy-Bart Stan (Imperial College, London). Karthik has also written a couple of well cited reviews on flux balance analysis (180 citations) and construction and analysis of proteinâ€"protein interaction networks (50+ citations).
Dr. R. Vinu obtained his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from A.C. College of Technology, Anna University, Chennai, in 2006, and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2010. His doctoral thesis was on understanding the kinetics and mechanism of industrially relevant photo-initiated organic and polymer reactions. Before joining IIT Madras in 2012, he worked as a post doctoral research assistant in Northwestern University, IL, U.S.A., where he worked on microkinetic modeling of biomass conversion to biofuels via fast pyrolysis. He has authored over 30 research papers, one book chapter and filed a patent.
The primary focus of his research group at IIT Madras is to integrate experiments and mechanistic models to understand the chemistry and kinetics of complex reactions relevant to industry and renewable energy. Some of the key research areas include:
1. Green conversion of biomass components like lignin to value added phenols, guaiacols and syringols via photocatalysis and catalytic fast pyrolysis
2. Non-conventional methods of biomass deconstruction to sugars using a combination of ultrasound, microwave and enzymatic processes
3.Thermochemical conversion of lignocellulosic biomass, waste plastics, municipal solid wastes and microalgae to biofuels and/or useful intermediates via catalytic fast pyrolysis and microwave pyrolysis
4. Development of novel bio-based composites (e.g. chitosan-lignin, modified thermochemical chars) as efficient adsorbents for detoxification of organic pollutants
5. Characterization of energy feedstocks and fuels, and development of models for biomass combustion
6. Understanding the stability of aged engine oils and developing correlations between the degree of ageing and the relevant ageing marker
7. Process intensification of industrial reactions via bench scale tests and kinetic modeling
Dr. Ratna Kumar Annabattula is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras. He joined the institute in December 2012. He received his PhD in Micromechanics of Materials from University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
His research interests include granular mechanics, mechanics of thin films for microsystem design and multi-scale modelling of materials. His main research focus at IIT Madras has been to investigate thermo-mechanical behaviour of (granular) breeder materials in nuclear fusion reactors. Towards this goal, his group develops computational models to study the thermo-mechanical response of granular systems at particle-scale using Discrete Element Method and at continuum-scale using Finite Element Method.
He has been an active member of international ceramic breeder material modelling community working towards the development of the first experimental fusion reactor-ITER. His current research on breeder materials at IIT Madras has direct implications to the ITER program in general and ITER-India in particular.
I work on developing novel combustor for gas turbine engines, which is being filed for patent now. This novel technology will change the current day combustors, and can perform much better than existing combustors. They can produce very low pollutant emissions and can work without combustion instability. I also work on developing SCRamjet combustor in academic scale and will be doing advanced diagnostics on it. I will be known in the community for research on combustion, high speed flows, and advanced diagnostics for reacting high speed flows.
I teach several courses in the department, along with teaching martial arts and self defense to the interested students in the evenings.
Dr. Shaikh Faruque ALI is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT—M. He is a Civil Engineering graduate from Jadavpur University and then continued his MSc and PhD at Indian Institute of Science—Bangalore. He received his doctorate in 2009. He has been as post-doctoral scientist at Automatic Control Research Laboratory (CRAN) at IUT-Longwy, France. He is a Newton International Fellow to Royal Society, UK and Associate Fellow to Indian National Academy of Engineering.
Dr. ALI joined Department of Applied Mechanics in December 2011. His research interests in IIT-M are currently on, Linear and nonlinear energy harvesting, harvester design and applications, modelling and control of dynamical systems, structural health monitoring and morphing structures.
Dr. Kalpana Mahalingam is an Associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, IIT Madras. She joined IITM in September 2008 after having worked as a PDF in the Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, Canada, for 4 years. She has her Bachelors degree from University of Madras, Masters from IITM and Ph.d. from University of South Florida, all in Mathematics. She has totally 16 years of teaching and research experience. Her broad area of research includes Bio-Molecular computing and Discrete Mathematics.
Dr.
After joining IIT Madras, he has secured research funding of nearly 800 lakhs from various funding agencies to setup and run a Microfluidics Research Facility to carryout cutting-edge research in the area. He has guided 4
He is the recipient of the Institute Research and Development Award (IRDA)- Early Career Level in 2017 (from IIT Madras), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) Young Engineer Award, 2013, Institution of Engineers India (IEI) Young Engineer Award, 2013 and DAAD Fellowship, 2012.
He is a member of Indian Society of Heat and Mass Transfer, Indian Society of Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power, and Indian Society of Smart Materials and Structures. His main research interests are in the areas of
Aravind did his B.E.(Hons) in E.E.E and M.Sc.(Hons) in Physics from BITS Pilani in 2001. He then did his PhD in experimental atomic and molecular Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Mumbai. He worked as postdoctoral fellow at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and then in the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research interests include photoelectron spectroscopy and dissociation dynamics of Interstellar medium ions. He was awarded the INSA Young Scientist Medal for Physics in 2012.
Dr. Vignesh Muthuvijayan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from ACTech, Anna University. He went on to pursue his Master's degree in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and his PhD in Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University. He also worked as a post-doc at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests are in the area of biomaterials and their applications. He works on improving biocompatibility of implants, developing controlled drug delivery systems and designing novel scaffolds for tissue engineering and wound healing applications.
Arun Menon is an Assistant Professor of Structural Engineering. His expertise is in structural behaviour of historical masonry monuments, including diagnostic techniques, numerical modelling, and retrofit and strengthening design.
In 2008, he co-authored a chapter on "Retrofit of Historical and Heritage Structures" in the Handbook on Seismic Retrofit of Buildings, a joint publication of CPWD-IIT Madras-IBC, with Prof. M.S. Mathews, his M.Tech. thesis supervisor at IIT Madras. In 2013, he played a central role in attaining Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), GoI funding to establish the National Centre for Safety of Heritage Structures (NCSHS) at IIT Madras with state-of-the-art experimental and analytical facilities. He is currently Coordinator of NCSHS and Convener of its National Advisory Board. NCSHS is now developing a state-of-the-art 3.0m x 3.0m 10T payload biaxial shake table facility at IIT Madras. NCSHS has been assessing and providing structural retrofit solutions for historical monuments across the country, including the Kedarnath Temple, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Jagannath Temple (Puri) and IIM Ahmedabad buildings.
Arun Menon has served as a specialist to UNESCO for
Rupesh is an Assistant Professor in the CSE department at IIT Madras. He completed PhD from IISc Bangalore and Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin. Rupesh is a winner at Yahoo! HackU, has received NVIDIA Special Prize, and holds five US patents. His biggest strength is his students.
Rupesh's research focus is in Compilers and Parallelization
Dr. B. Kalyan Kumar received his Bachelors of Technology from J.N.T.U. Hyderabad, India, in the year 2001. He received Masters of Technology and Ph.D. degrees from the IIT Kanpur, India, in 2003 and 2007, respectively. He is at present an Associate Professor in the department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras. His areas of interest include power system dynamics, Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS), restructured power systems, power quality and wind generation systems.
Mathangi Krishnamurthy is a socio-cultural anthropologist by training and has completed her doctoral work from the The University of Texas at Austin. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Krishnamurthy's research has focused on the nightly lives of transnational customer service workers in Pune, India and is encapsulated in a soon to be published book manuscript entitled "1-800-Worlds". She has published on questions of English language usage, anthropology of work, and anthropology of gender. Her new projects follow questions of medical practice and identity in relation to the genetic diagnosis of a set of rare conditions of gender ambivalence. Her areas of interest include the anthropology of work, globalization, and affective labor. Krishnamurthy has experience in undergraduate and graduate teaching, social science and ethnographic research, and communication consultancy spanning eight years.
Dr. Manu Jaiswal graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi in 2001 with a degree in Physics (Hons.). He then joined the Integrated PhD program in Physics at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. After completing PhD in 2008, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz and subsequently at the National University of Singapore. He joined as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, IIT Madras in December 2011. He is a recipient of Prof. Anil Kumar Memorial award for best PhD thesis in Physics from IISc. Bangalore and Dr. G.C. Jain Memorial award from Materials Research Society of India for best PhD thesis in Material Science.
His current research interests include the physics and applications of graphene and 2D systems. At IIT Madras, as a principal investigator, he has worked on problems such as the snap-through instability of atomically-thin graphene membranes, graphene membranes as an anti-corrosion barrier for metal surfaces, two-dimensional confined water sandwiched between graphene layers, and also the thermal expansion property of single-layer graphene. Prior to joining IIT Madras, he has worked extensively on mesoscopic physics of graphene,
Dr. Arun Kumar Thittai, joined IITM in March 2014. Previously, he was a faculty at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston (UTHSC), USA. He have been working in the field of Ultrasound Elastography, imaging the elastic properties of soft tissues using ultrasound since commencement of his PhD research work in the Ultrasonics and Elastographics laboratory at UTHSC, Houston. Subsequently, He did a postdoctoral fellowship at M.D.Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA.
His research efforts during
Prior to research in ultrasound Elastography, He spent two years working in the bio-signal analysis lab at the University of Houston to develop signal processing algorithms for an automated system to detect seizures from neonatal EEG data.
Dr. Mathava Kumar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras. He obtained his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Engineering from Govt. College of Technology affiliated to Bharathiyar University, and received his PhD from IIT Madras. Subsequently, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan for 4 years, worked as an Assistant Professor at NIT Calicut for nearly 4 years and then joined IIT Madras in 2014. Dr. Mathava Kumar's research interest includes wastewater treatment using biological processes, membrane (bio)reactors, emerging pollutants removal by advanced oxidation processes, trace organics removal by adsorption and solid waste management. He has published several quality journal publications in the area of water purification, wastewater treatment and solid waste management (with h-index of 17 and over 1000 citations). Currently, he is one of the institutional members for water quality sectional committee (CHD36) of BIS and member for State Level Advisory Body (SLAB) for solid waste management at Union Territory of Lakshadweep (UTL).
Dr. Amitava Ghosh has received his
His current research activities include development of solid-lubricant composite coating, machining with nanocrystalline diamond coating, micro lubrication technology for machining and grinding,
Dr. Anand T.N.C. is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IITM, where he has been a faculty member since 2010. He received his
His research interests include experimental investigations on droplet and spray processes with applications in diverse fields including internal combustion engines and metal powder production.
Dr. Parasuraman is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. He is an alumnus of the institute, having graduated in 2003, with a B. Tech and M. Tech Dual degree. He completed his
Dr. Parasuraman teaches solid-state physics and electronic materials, at the undergraduate and graduate level. He has an online course through NPTEL and has published a textbook in 2017 (Wiley). His current research interests are in the area of printed electronics and thin film deposition.
Dr. V.Sriram is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras. He obtained his B.Tech in Civil Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering and obtained the direct
His research interests are numerical modelling of nonlinear wave-structure interactions; Particle method; Hybrid modelling; violent wave – elastic structure interactions; Experimental modelling of wave impacts with structures; Long wave modeling
Young Faculty Recognization Award
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