Five outstanding scientists and engineers have been selected to receive the Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Award of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for the year 2021.
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.
This year’s awardees are Dr Anuradha M Annaswamy, Prof Sajal K Das, Prof T Pradeep, Prof CS Raghavendra and Dr Ritu Shrivastava.
Dr Anuradha M Annaswamy is a Senior Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. She 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. Dr Annaswamy completed her BE from the Department of Electrical Engineering of IISc in 1979.
Prof Sajal K Das is a Professor of Computer Science and Daniel St Clair Endowed Chair at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA, and co-founder of Smart Health Beacons, LLC. Prof 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 the Department of Computer Science and Automation of IISc in 1985.
Prof T Pradeep is an Institute Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. He 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. Prof Pradeep completed his PhD from the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit of IISc in 1991.
Prof CS Raghavendra is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Vice Dean for Global Academic Initiatives for the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, USA. He has made 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. Prof Raghavendra completed his BE and ME from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering of IISc in 1976 and 1978 respectively.
Dr Ritu Shrivastava is a former Vice President, Technology Development at SanDisk Corporation, USA. He has made 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. Dr Shrivastava completed his BE and ME from the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering of IISc in 1971 and 1973 respectively.
“We are honoured to confer this award upon these five distinguished graduates of the Indian Institute of Science,” says Prof Govindan Rangarajan, Director, IISc. “Each one has made exceptional contributions to their respective fields and to society, and this award is a fitting recognition of their achievements. These awardees will be an inspiration for the current and recently graduated students of the Institute.”
