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.
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 Shrivastavais 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.”