Five scientists, engineers get IISc's Distinguished Alumnus Award

The Indian Institute of Science’s (IISc) distinguished alumni awards for 2021 have gone to five scientists working in the United States and in India.

This year’s awardees are Dr Anuradha M Annaswamy, a senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Professor Sajal K Das of Missouri University of Science and Technology, Professor T Pradeep of IIT Madras, Professor C S Raghavendra of the University of Southern California and Dr Ritu Shrivastava, a former vice president of Technology Development at SanDisk Corporation.

“The annual awards recognise exceptional contributions made by IISc alumni/ae to their profession, society and the Institute. The nominations received are evaluated by a committee chaired by the Director, IISc,” the institute said in a statement.

Dr Annaswamy is a pioneer in control theory and technology, and has made many seminal contributions to adaptive control theory, control of neural networks, control architectures of adaptive control and machine learning; applications to aerospace and automotive systems; control of combustion systems, smart grids and urban mobility. She completed her BE from IISc’s Department of Electrical Engineering in 1979.

Professor Das has made award-winning contributions to mobile and pervasive computing, wireless and sensor networks, smart environments, and cyber-physical and IoT systems security. He completed his ME from IISc’s Department of Computer Science and Automation in 1985.

Meanwhile, Professor Pradeep has been recognised for his innovative contributions to metal nanoparticle-based drinking water purification methods and path-breaking work on the development of molecular and nanoscale materials. He also conceptualised and built the International Centre for Clean Water at IIT Madras. He completed his PhD from IISc’s Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit in 1991.

Professor C S Raghavendra is known for his significant contributions to the design and analysis of interconnection networks, reliability and fault-tolerant computing, parallel algorithms for enhanced meshes and hypercubes, power-aware protocols for wireless ad hoc networks, and applying machine learning algorithms to oil field problems. He completed his BE and ME from the IISc’s Department of Electrical Communication Engineering in 1976 and 1978 respectively.

Another alumnus from IISc’s Department of Electrical Communication Engineering is Dr Shrivastava who went on to make seminal contributions to semiconductor device physics, and memory chip design and fabrication, which have stretched the limits of transistor density on chips, memory cell access speed, and led to lower power consumption. He completed his BE and ME from the Department in 1971 and 1973 respectively.

“Each one has made exceptional contributions to their respective fields and to society, and this award is a fitting recognition of their achievements,” said Professor Govindan Rangarajan, Director of IISc.

Check out latest videos from DH: