New director of iit g .
Sunday 24 November 2013
Tuesday 5 November 2013
India's Mangalyaan satellite lifts off successfully
In its its first-ever launch outside the Earth's sphere of influence in
its 44-year-long history, India's premier space agency, ISRO, today
launched the Mangalyaan satellite successfully as PSLV-C25 lifts off
from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, about 100 from
Chennai.
India's first mission to Mars started at 2.38 pm on Tuesday.
The 44.4-metre tall trusted workhorse of the Indian Space Research
Organization (ISRO) stood on its launchpad as its tanks were filled
with fuel that will power the rocket over its four stages into space
to insert the spacecraft into an Earth orbit. Final destination: Mars,
the Red Planet, 400 million km and 300 days' journey away.
The actual launch operations will
only involve about 43 minutes of
rocket flight. But it is still set to
be the longest initial flight for any
launch in ISRO's history.
"If the rocket has to function and
the vehicle is able to put the
satellite into an orbit of 23,500
km-by-250 km, that is sufficient.
There is a band 675 km plus or
minus this number. Anywhere
within that if it is put, it is a
success," ISRO chairman K
Radhakrishnan said of the
expectations for the initial flight
— the first step in the long
journey to Mars.
If all goes well on Tuesday, the next major test for the mission will
come on November 30, when the spacecraft is scheduled to begin
its journey to Mars: The trans Martian injection. And then again in
September 2014, when it will inject the Mars orbiter into the Mars
orbit.
The launch will involve 23 minutes of flight when the rocket will be
visible to ISRO through its own ground station at Biak near
Indonesia. The subsequent operations, during which the rocket will
disengage the spacecraft and place it in a Earth orbit, will be
tracked by special ship-borne terminals: Nalanda and Yamuna in the
South Pacific Ocean.
The specific operations that the ship-borne terminals will monitor
are the ignition of the fourth stage of the rocket at 33 minutes, and
the separation of the satellite from the rocket at around 43
minutes. After the initial 23 minutes, the rocket will coast for about
10 minutes before the fourth stage ignition takes place.
"Up to 23 minutes of flight we can have visibility. Beyond that we
don't have visibility. These ship terminals are placed in two
positions in such way that the ignition of the fourth stage is seen
and the separation of the satellite is seen. Immediately after the
separation of the satellite we also have the deployment of the solar
panel, which happens automatically based on the command stored
in the spacecraft," the ISRO chairman said.
"It is a leap forward. It is a turning point for the country if we are
able to accomplish this. Any progress we make in this is new
learning. Any progress we make from then onwards is a learning for
us," he said.
DESTINATION MARS
A 299-day journey of 400 mn km at a cost of Rs 450 cr
LIFT-OFF: TODAY
PSLV-C25 lifts off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, at
2.38 pm. In 42-min first phase of the flight, Mangalyaan will be put
into a 248 km-by-23,000 km elliptical Earth Parking Orbit.
DEPARTURE: NOV 30
Leaves Earth in a direction tangential to Earth's orbit around the
Sun. Encounters Mars tangentially to its orbit around the Sun.
Trans-Martian injection of December 1 is most crucial part of
mission, says ISRO.
MARS ORBIT INSERTION: SEP 21, 2014
Spacecraft reaches Mars's sphere of influence in hyperbolic
trajectory; expected to be captured into planned orbit when it
reaches Mars Periapsis. Nine earlier Mars missions have failed at
this stage.
Only 21 of the 51 attempted Mars missions have been successful.
Attempts by Japan in 1999 and China in 2011 failed.
Monday 4 November 2013
IIT Delhi Alumni Award Outstanding Contribution to National Development for the year 2012-13.
IIT Delhi Alumni Award for
Outstanding Contribution to
National Development 2012-2013
Dear Alumni,
We are pleased to inform that the IIT Delhi
Alumni Association has decided to confer upon
the IIT Delhi Alumni Award for Outstanding
Contribution to National Development 2012-13
as follows:
Mr. Ajay Kumar, 75, BT, EL
Mr. Shashank Tripathi, 86,BT,ME
A brief profile of the awardees is enclosed for
your information. IIT Delhi Alumni Association
shall be conferring these awards at the Annual
General Body Meeting on 27 th April 2013 at
Seminar Hall, IIT Delhi.
Regards,
Pravin Purang
Secretary
IIT Delhi Alumni Association
-------------------------------------------------
Mr. Ajay Kumar received his B.Tech. and
M.Tech. degrees in Electrical Engineering from
IIT, Delhi in 1975 and 1977 respectively. He
has been a full time ‘development
professional’, working with NGO’s,
governments, companies, professionals,
academics and academia for the last 35 years.
His focus has been on rural development /
technology, renewable energy, e-governance,
agriculture / livelihood of small and marginal
farmers, strengthening NGOs and motivating
young professionals to work in the
development sector.
For his contemporaries and youngsters, he is a
role model who has taken the unconventional
route, the ‘road less travelled’. Even here he
has mostly worked as a free-lancer, preferring
the un-structured path rather than the
“alternate” structures that most development
professionals opt for. He is admired by many
in the NGO sector, by bureaucrats, IIT-ians,
professionals, especially young professionals,
friends and, last but not least, the beneficiaries
in villages and other places where he has
worked.
As a development professional he has taken a
multi-dimensional approach, and has worked
on/ with a large number of aspects of
“development”, from personal growth to team
working to social organization, models of
development, NGOs, volunteering, motivation
of young professionals, thought process of
Gandhi and other development thinkers,
manpower mobilization, fund raising,
networking with individuals and institutions,
policy formulation in government, and more.
The foundation for this multi-dimensional
approach evolved through interaction within a
group of friends and associates, namely Mr.
Anand Kumar, Dr. NN Mehrotra, Dr. Vibha
Gupta, Mr. Vinoo Kaley and Ajay. This group
took up several unconventional and innovative
initiatives in the decade of 1980’s which
helped Ajay to understand development from a
multi-dimensional perspective. The group itself
had the good fortune to learn from national
level policy planners, as well as thinkers and
practitioners of rural development.
Ajay had his first major brush with rural
development activities while heading the NSS
unit at IIT Delhi. His interaction with top
scientists and policy planners at that stage was
crucial in building in him the confidence to go
ahead and make the development sector a
career choice. The Centre for Rural
Development and Appropriate Technology
(RDAT) at IIT New Delhi was a product of such
interactions. Later on he worked for four years
in villages in and around Wardha, in
Maharashtra, in an institution setup by
Gandhiji to work on Science & Technology
issues. Here he had extensive exposure to
Gandhiji thoughts, Gandhian institutions, and
followers of Gandhi. He then shifted to
Gujarat, where he spent almost two decades. In
early 2000 he shifted to Madhya Pradesh. He
currently lives & works in Bhopal. His wife, Dr
Upma Diwan is a full time social worker who
has lived and worked with Aadivaasis for more
than 30 years in Madhya Pradesh.
He spent most of the decade of the eighties in
motivating young professionals to choose to
work in the development sector, and also
helped setup an institution, along with a few
other pioneers from industry, government and
the NGO sector in Gujarat, on the theme of
‘Science & Technology Missionaries’.
He was a member of the team that
conceptualised and implemented the first
‘Rural Technology’ project initiated by the
Department of Science and Technology
(Government of India) in 1979 at Wardha, and
was head of the team that setup the first solar
energy village in India (Gujarat) in 1984.
He was also active in relief and rehabilitation
work after the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984,
drought relief in Gujarat in 1987-88 and in
relief and rehabilitation in the aftermath of the
Gujarat earthquake in 2001, in the company of
his friend and colleague, Anand Kumar.
Between 1999 and 2003 , as a small deviation
from his main focus, he spent 4 years working
in the software industry in Delhi, Bangalore,
the USA and in Singapore as a specialist in
software engineering tools and processes
(Rational Rose & Rational Unified Process).
Since 1995 Ajay has been actively involved in a
large number of e-governance projects that
are specially relevant to the poor, to
agriculture and to livelihood issues. These
include the computerisation of the Gujarat
High Court & the Gujarat District Courts,
AGRISNET, a project about ICT based services
to farmers through the Department of
Agriculture (MP), an e-PDS project linking
Ration Cards to the UID/ Adhaar card under
the Department of Food & Civil Supplies (MP),
an NREGA project of Maharashtra Government,
etc. He has also been a member of the
committee on e-governance setup by the Prime
Minister.
Over the last decade or so Ajay Kumar has
been working with farmers’ organizations and
the Madhya Pradesh Department of Agriculture
& Mandi Boards. He also worked as an advisor
to a corporate house on CSR activities in the
field of agriculture and rural development for
several years. He was also a member of a
committee setup by the Planning Commission
on “ICT and Agriculture” for the 12 th Five Year
Plan.
As he was not a regular earner Ajay Kumar was
initially supported, financially, by his mother,
and later by his wife. Equally important has
been the contributions, from time to time, of
friends from IIT, IIM, the software industry,
NRIs and other friends from business and
industry. Many of these friends in Delhi,
Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh
opened up their houses for him – for days,
months and even years. This experience has
sustained and increased his optimism about
the possibility of good in society.
One of his major interest areas is –
strengthening the civil society sector and NGOs
by networking, creating new networks, getting
professional inputs into the sector, devising
mechanisms to enroll quality manpower into
the sector and involving the civil society in
policy formulation in partnership with
government. He is concerned about the
marginalization of smaller NGOs and is keen to
increase their contribution and participation in
the development process
He has been and continues to advise many
NGOs in Gujarat, Maharashtra, MP and Delhi
besides interacting with policy planners on
issues of development. He makes himself
available for e-governance projects in MP and
around.
He loves to keep in touch with the ground
reality by living in villages and interacting with
different types of beneficiaries specially the
poor in the rural, tribal and remote areas. His
wife has enriched this experience by her close
link with people in remote tribal areas.
Many elders have guided him in this journey
and he wishes to acknowledge their
compassion and contribution.
---------------------------------------------------
Mr. Shashank Tripathi received his Bachelor
of Technology Degree in Mechanical
Engineering from IIT, Delhi in 1986. Mr.
Tripathi is currently the Partner and Head of
Strategy - PwC India and is leading the Strategy
Consulting practice of PwC India.
He is the Chairman of Yagriti Seva Sansthan, an
NGO that is working for the development of
the villages in Eastern UP, and also supports
young entrepreneurs.This NGO has been
relentlessly working towards rural upliftment,
and supporting young entrepreneurs who want
to contribute towards building a better society
Some of his major accomplishments include:
Author of - India: A journey through a healing
civilization. This book captured the 1997 Yatra,
which was published in August 2007 on the
60th Anniversary of India's independence by
Harper Collins India.
He is also Founder and Creator of Jagriti Yatra,
which has now become a phenomena in the
country to promote youth enterprise for the
development of middle India. This initiative
has done 6 journeys till now across the
country, taking 400-450 carefully selected and
motivated youth across the country in a
dedicated train for 8000-9000 km, to meet
role models like Elango, Anna Hazare, Arvind
Eye Care etc, learn from it, and provides a
solid basis for these youngsters to start their
own social enterprise. This initiative is widely
covered by media and supported by companies
like Tata, Google, Dell, Etc. Mr. Tripathi is very
passionate about national development and has
been working hard to give the necessary
exposure and platforms to young
entrepreneurs to learn from role models and
start their social ventures
Padma Shri Award bestowed upon Mr. Avinash Chander, IIT Delhi, Batch of 1972
Mr. Avinash Chander, IIT Delhi Alumnus, Batch
of 1972, with a B.Tech in Electrical
Engineering has been awarded the prestigious
Padma Shri Award by the Government of India
on Republic Day this year.
IITs ranked No.3 among tech varsities
LONDON: The IITs may have slid down the
rankings of the world's best universities, but
when compared with their peer institutions
they have held their own or even improved
their position.
A week after the Times Higher Education
Supplement (THES) ranked the IITs at No. 57
among universities, it has ranked them No. 3
among the world's technology universities —
the same position as in 2005 — and at No. 33
in the list of science universities, which is
three notches up from last year's No. 36.
Noida hospital design gets IIT approval
NOIDA: IIT-Delhi has approved the design
for the proposed district hospital building
in Sector 39, Noida. The project report for
the building had been sent to IIT after a
private consultant prepared it for Noida
Authority.
IIT's approval has cleared the decks for
necessary documentation related to
tendering process for the construction
work. "All paperwork is expected to be
completed by September end. After this,
tenders will be floated for construction of
the building," said an Authority official.
Authority officials said it will take at least
two years to complete construction.
The estimated cost to be incurred by the
Authority has been pegged at Rs 425 crore.
The hospital will have 200 beds and be
equipped with a state-of-the-art trauma
centre. The Noida Authority board had
approved the plan to upgrade the district
hospital in January.
The hospital will have a double basement
for parking vehicles. Officials said the
hospital premises will have housing
quarters for the staff on emergency duty.
Earlier this year, Noida Authority had
decided against shifting the now defunct
Sector 39 district hospital to the Ambedkar
hospital in Sector 30. It had, instead,
announced that it will be upgraded it into
a multi-speciality utility.
Hoobastank band mesmerised the crowd at IIT Delhi annual fest
The first day of the IIT Delhi annual fest was
as grand as was promised, with people
trying to enter even after the main
performance had ended.
The amphitheatre was jam-packed with
students climbing trees and scaling the
boundary walls because, like they said
here, 'This was an experience you couldn't
afford to miss'. The crowd kept chanting
for the band Hoobastank during the earlier
performances also, but when asked about
their favourite Hoobastank song, other
than The Reason, everyone was clueless. A
quiz that the emcees conducted during set-
up also had to be stopped midway because,
well, no one had the answers!
But none of this had any effect on the
energy of the crowd when the band finally
came on stage. What caught our eye were
the big shaadi wale fans that were
especially added to the stage right before
Douglas Robb, Chris Hesse, Dan Estrin and
Jesse Charland from Hoobastank started
performing.
The band had everyone in the crowd
screaming along, even without much
'lyrics knowledge'. DSLRs and fancy phone
cameras were out all through the
performance, and the crowd recorded their
bit and clicked themselves with Hoobastank
performing in the background. In fact, the
band members too, who were all superbly
impressed with the IIT crowd, made the
students raise their hands and pose for
their own pictures, which they uploaded
on their official Twitter page with the
caption, "Say hello to our new friends from
IIT in New Delhi!"
Arvind Kejriwal addresses IIT Delhi students
NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party convener
Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday addressed
students at IIT Delhi, emphasizing the role
of youth in rebuilding India through
corruption-free politics.
Sources said that after the meet, 425 IIT
students reportedly joined the party as
volunteers. AAP has given a ticket for the
Malviya Nagar assembly seat, under which
IIT Delhi campus falls, to IIT student
Somnath Bharti.
"Kejriwal has given them the responsibility
to campaign actively for AAP and help win
the assembly seat. Somnath Bharti, who is
a well known lawyer, has also served as
the president of Delhi IIT alumni
association," said a release by AAP.
IIT-BHU students protest against new ordinance
VARANASI: The career of more than 100
students of B Tech third IIIrd and IVth
years of Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT), Banaras Hindu University (BHU) is at
stake as an ordinance which was passed in
November 2012 but not circulated prevents
them from appearing in the back paper
exams in the following semester
examination, thereby delaying their degree
by one to two years.
Upset over the decision, around 150
students of different departments of IIT-
BHU staged a sit-in stir at the director's
office in the institute's premises on
Saturday.
As per the new ordinance, it does not
permit the students to appear for the back
paper along with the current semester
examination. Instead, the students have to
appear for the backlog next year. The
students have alleged that the new
ordinance passed by the IIT-BHU in
November 2012 was not circulated to them
and that it will delay their degree by a
couple of years thereby affecting their
careers.
According to them, the new ordinance was
passed after the conversion of Institute of
Technology (IT-BHU) into IIT-BHU. On the
other hand, the third and fourth year
students were admitted in the institute
prior to this.
Notably, students who are in the final year
of the course with at least one back paper
are the worst hit as they will not be able to
sit for the job placement sessions which is
likely to get started from year end.
According to the students, the new
ordinance also forces them to appear for
only two supplementary papers at a time,
thereby students who have three to four
supplementary papers cannot complete
their course in the current or next
academic session.
Students have also alleged that when they
became aware of the new rule recently,
they wrote to authorities asking them to
roll back the decision for this semester on
the grounds that the students were
admitted prior to conversion of IT BHU into
IIT. However, there was no proper
communication from the authorities' side.
The students have demanded that they
should be allowed to appear for the back
paper in the forthcoming semester
examination which will get started from
November 22 onwards.
Despite several efforts, director, IIT-BHU,
Dr Rajeev Sanghal could not be contacted
to give a comment on the matter. It is not
the first time that IIT-BHU students have
protested against the new ordinance due to
lack of information. Prior to this, in April,
students of MTech, protested against a new
rule that directs the students to leave the
course midway for securing less than six
CGPA (cumulative grade point average) in
the first semester examination. During that
time also students alleged that the
authorities did not made them aware of the
new rule.
Convert Indian School of Mines to IIT: Rajya Sabha member
NEW DELHI: A demand to convert the
Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad into an
Indian Institute of Technology was raised
in the Rajya Sabha by a JMM member.
Raising the issue during the zero hour,
Sanjiv Kumar said around 1,500 students
of Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad are
agitating in front of Jantar Mantar and an
equal number are doing so at ISM,
Dhanbad demanding the 86-year-old
institute be converted into an IIT.
He said though Jharkhand assembly had
passed a resolution in 2011 requesting the
Centre for the conversion of Indian School
of Mines into IIT, Dhanbad, nothing has
happened yet. He said ISM, Dhanbad was
established in 1926 as a specialized
institute dealing in earth sciences and is
now a full-fledged engineering college with
17 departments.
Raising another issue, Ali Anwar Ansari of
JD (U) demanded the early setting up of a
campus of Aligarh Muslim University at
Kishanganj in Bihar and release of funds
for the same by the central government.
Ansari said the funds are not being released
despite top Congress leaders making poll
promises during Bihar assembly elections.
He said though Bihar government has
handed over 224 acres of land for the
setting up of the campus, theCentre is not
releasing funds for the same, resulting in
delay in the establishment of the campus.
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