IIT-Kanpur campus (Source: official website)
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur celebrates its 61st Foundation Day virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 2000 alumni across the world participated in the event and 22 awards were bestowed upon the selected alumni for their ‘outstanding achievements in their respective fields’. Among the awardees were eminent scientists, industry experts, technocrats, and social activists.
IIT-Kanpur’s Satyendra K Dubey memorial award was presented to Ravi Kumar (batch 2001) who is district magistrate Patna. RK Mathur (batch 1975) a former bureaucrat from the Tripura cadre and the first lieutenant governor of Ladakh and Prof Meenakshi Narain (batch 1982) of the Brown University US who led the collaboration board for US institutions participating in the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, an experiment pushing the frontiers of modern particle physics were amongst those awarded in the distinguished alumnus category.
The Young Alumnus Award for those below was conferred to Abhiraj Singh Bhal, co-founder and CEO of Urban Company (formerly Urban Clap) and Barna Saha, assistant professor, department of IEOR, University of California, Berkeley.
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This year, two members of IIT-K faculty, professor Viswanath Sinha, department of electrical engineering and professor Ashutosh Sharma, department of chemical engineering along with alumni, Umang Gupta were honoured as ‘Institute Fellows’. This is for their contribution to the overall growth of the institute causing an impact on Indian society not only in the fields of education, academics, industrial development, etc but also on the overall well-being of the society and bringing laurels to the nation, the IIT said. Past recipients of the awards included Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, NR Narayana Murthy co-founder, Infosys among several others.
Prof. K Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific advisor, the government of India while Chairman Board of Governors IIT-Kanpur was the chief guest of the function.