Pradipta Banerji

Pradipta Banerji is currently the Director of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee a post he has held since October 2011. He also is Professor of Civil Engineering at IIT Bombay^[1] and at IIT Roorkee.^[2]

Education

He joined as an Assistant Professor in IIT Bombay in April 1988 and spent more than 23 years there as a faculty member, during which period he has also been awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award, and was the Dean (Alumni & International Relations) for two terms. He has been Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of Statics and Dynamics for Aerospace Structures at University of Stuttgart and the Mechanical Engineering Department at University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. His areas of research specialization are Earthquake Engineering and Structural Health Monitoring, and he has been active in guiding research, publishing scholarly papers and developing technology that has been applied in practical situations in both areas. Notably, he has helped the Indian Railways by developing a technology for “Bridge Asset Management under Increased Axle Loads”.

He is a member/fellow of several professional societies including IISHMII, where he is also a member of the Executive Council from the inception of the society. He is an Editor of the Journal for Civil Structural Health Monitoring published by Springer. He is also a member and/or chairman of several national and internal level boards and committees for capacity building and research.^[3]

During his term as Director here, IIT Roorkee has won several National Awards for being an Outstanding Engineering Institute.

Controversy

IIT-Roorkee made history of sorts by expelling six per cent of its first year batch this week for poor performance^[4] . This sparked protests on campus of IITR, but he said there is a procedure and logic behind this. Students were made aware of the criteria at the time of admission. They were also reminded about it and asked to improve their performance when it was felt they were slipping. The decision hasn't come as a shock to them.

References