SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Dec 9: Naresh K Vashisht, an alumnus of IIT Indian School of Mines (ISM) Dhanbad and president, Omimex Group, USA, announced a fund of Rs 10 crore to his alma mater for setting up a Hydrogen & Carbon (CO2) Capture and Sequestration Centre.
Vashisht made this announcement as chief guest while addressing the 97th Foundation Day celebrations of IIT-ISM on Friday.
Notably, the Hydrogen & Carbon Capture and Sequestration Centre will be the second centre established with the help of Vashisht in IIT-ISM. Earlier, he had funded Rs 8 crores in 2020 for an innovation hub titled, Naresh Vashisht Centre for Tinkering which is already functional.
Vashisht, who delivered the online address from Texas (USA) said, “Students are the biggest assets of any institute as they act as brand ambassadors of the institute”
He further said that India is in a unique position with and only bright spot for the world in the present scenario and further called upon the students to carry out research on areas which have several industrial applications.
On the 97th foundation day, the Kolkata Chapter of IIT-ISM Alumni Association announced a fund of Rs 1 crore to its alma mater over the next three years till the Centenary Year celebration scheduled phase-wise from Friday and handed over a cheque of Rs 30 lakhs.
Prof Rajiv Shekhar Director, IIT-ISM who presided over the function, while addressing the gathering said that students face stress due to various reasons, including societal and peer pressure and other reasons including academic pressure.
“We have our systems in place to address such issues through counselling but we need to further work in this direction,” Shekhar further added.
The function further witnessed felicitations and presentations of awards to selected students, research scholars, faculty members and employees for their respective achievements and for their long services0.
Prof Shekhar provided the Long Service Awards to Prof VMSR Murthy of the Department of Mining Engineering, Dr Pramod Mathur (on deputation) Additional Registrar (Admin) and RK Biswas, Junior Engineering for completing 25 years of service at the Institute.
The function progressed with the conferment of the Inder Mohan Thapar Research Awards, 2021 to altogether 17 research scholars by VK Arora, chief mentor, KCT Group and President, IIT-ISM Alumni Association, Kolkata Chapter.
The director also felicitated 19 faculty members of the institute who are in the top 2 percent of the world’s scientists as per a survey conducted by Stanford University.
The awards for Product Development for Institutional Governance were conferred to Prof Saurabh Srivastava of the Computer Science Engineering Department and two employees of the Academic Section, Bishnu Kumar and V Prakash Narayan.
Altogether 23 students were also felicitated for their achievements in sports and other technical events including, Smart India Hackathon, Website Redesigning Contest and International Switch Energy Case Competition.
Six research scholars of the institute who are also Prime Minister Research Fellowship (PMRF) awardees for 2022, including Tripti Kundu and Saradindu Debnath of the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology; Namrata Mani Tripathi & Anjali Ramashankar Prasad of Mathematics & Computing Department, Avishek Dutta of Department of Applied Geology and Satyam Tiwari of Department of Civil Engineering were felicitated.
Prof Rajni Singh, dean (media and branding) of IIT-ISM further informed that an MoU exchange with Prof SP Banerjee, former director, of IIT-ISM also took place for Endowment Fund. Prof Banerjee provided Rs 5 Lakh while Prof RM Bhattacharjee contributed Rs 1 lakh.
