Alumnus Awards

Dr. Parthasarathy Ranganathan graduated from IIT Madras in 1994 with a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computing Engineering from Rice University. He worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories from 2000 to 2013 and held several positions including as HP Fellow and Chief Technologist, and led their research on next-generation systems including Project Moonshot and the Data-Centric Data Center program. As a Google Distinguished Engineer & Area Tech Lead, he is currently driving new technical directions and incubating innovations for the hardware and data centers that power all of Google's products.

Dr. Ranganathan's research areas can be broadly classified as Energy Efficiency and System Architecture. He pioneered energy-adaptive displays and energy-aware user interfaces. His ideas around heterogeneous single-ISA multicore architectures are now pervasively adopted in ARM's big. LITTLE architecture designs, underpinning billions of devices. He pioneered ensemble power capping that enables oversubscription of power budget across large clusters. He has made other seminal contributions, around temperature-aware scheduling, cross-layer power management, new industry standards like JouleSort, SpecPower, and PUE.

Dr. Ranganathan also executed an ambitious vision around disaggregated servers, rethinking system architectures across new system building blocks managed as federated ensembles. His notable contributions include microblade servers (the first to introduce low-power ARM processors for ultra-dense cloud servers) and memory blades (that broke the conventional co-location of computing and memory to enable a new class of in-memory workloads). At Google, he has defined a new category of software-defined hardware including pioneering novel applications of machine learning for the control plane to enable self-driving infrastructure and is leading the design of new custom silicon accelerators and new data hierarchies to accelerate Google workloads and accelerate cloud computing.

Dr. Ranganathan is a fellow of the IEEE and the ACM and is a member of the ISCA and ASPLOS halls of fame. He has been featured in numerous press articles and interviews and was named one of 15 Top Enterprise Technology Rock Stars by Business Insider, and one of the top 35 Young Innovators in the world by MIT Technology Review. He is also a recipient of the prestigious ACM Maurice Wilkes award and Rice University's Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni award. He has published more than 100 technical papers, co-authored the influential book “The Datacenter as a Computer (3rd Edition)” and is a co-inventor on more than 125 patents.

Dr. Ranganathan is also the founding member of the pan-IIT Alumni Association and the Secretary and Founding Director of IIT Madras Alumni Association of North America. For his groundbreaking technical innovation in the areas of energy efficiency and system architectures, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Dr. Parthasarathy Ranganathan.

Shri Ashish Dikshit graduated from IIT Madras with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering in 1990. In 1992, he got his Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Bangalore and subsequently completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. Shri Ashish Dikshit started his career in Asian Paints and was one of the youngest branch managers trusted with turning around two complex, issue-ridden, under-performing branches in Guwahati and then in Kolkata.

Subsequent to his stint with Asian Paints, he has spent a large part of his career in the fashion retail industry. After working across multiple roles across sales, marketing, supply chain and strategy, Shri Ashish became the CEO of Madura Garments in 2012 and led its rapid growth by developing India's leading fashion brands such as Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England through product and brand extensions as well as rapid retail expansion. Under his leadership, the company strengthened its position as India's largest branded apparel business by more than tripling its turnover and profits over next 5 years. Shri Ashish is currently the Managing Director of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd (ABFRL), a company formed by merging different fashion businesses of Aditya Birla Group. He is today looked upon as the tallest leader in the fashion and retail industry. He has contributed to the industry actively through retail forums, engagement with the government and regulatory bodies, especially during the GST mandate and transition phase, and by developing and mentoring young people who have gone on to leadership roles within the group and through the industry. Shri Ashish was honoured with the "Outstanding Leader Award” in the year 2011 by the Chairman of Aditya Birla Group.

In his earlier stint as the Principal Executive Assistant to the Chairman of Aditya Birla Group, Shri Ashish built a strong knowledge network across multiple industry sectors, ranging from manufacturing businesses such as metals, cement and specialty chemicals to consumer businesses such as Telecom, Financial Services and Retail. As part of the Group Central Cell for Strategy, he played a key role in several group level initiatives on vision and corporate planning, and HR and culture building initiatives to build a passionate, cohesive people organization across diverse companies of Aditya Birla Group.

Shri Ashish has a unique leadership style which various stakeholders refer to as “strong leadership with a soft touch”. He has seen difficult business cycles and demonstrated resilience and mental toughness in the face of adversity. The business cycles and the external environment have not made him waver from the vision course he has helped set for his businesses. He is a risk taker with high standards and a clear focus. With this vision, he has taken big bets throughout his career – on people, on partnerships, on how the retail industry will pan out. He values authenticity and humaneness above all else. While having trained to value IQ, he epitomizes EQ and brings out the best in people and has stayed humble through successes and achievements.

For demonstrating exceptional managerial and leadership abilities and achievements, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Shri Ashish Dikshit.

Shri Harcharan (Harry) Singh graduated from IIT Madras with a Bachelor's Degree from the Department of Metallurgy in 1970. In 1972, he obtained a MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). Shri Singh has exceptional leadership and management achievements in both the corporate and entrepreneurial arena in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

In the Corporate world, after commencing his career in 1972 as Product Manager in Warner Lambert India, Shri Singh served as General Manager, Tata Pharma. He later was Director of Lederle International, India/USA – a global pharmaceutical company subsequently acquired by Pfizer Inc, where he worked both in India and NJ, USA in their Corporate HQ till 1989.

After an illustrious career in the Corporate world, in 1990, Shri Singh founded Glopec International Inc, Canada – a global Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) company and played a pioneering role in helping dozens of Indian Pharma companies including leading companies such as Sun Pharma, Hetero Drugs and Glenmarkenter the North American market by facilitating their USFDA approvals.

Over his entrepreneurial career, Shri Singh co-founded/promoted/mentored several companies in the Pharmaceutical industry in Ireland, India, Canada & USA including Eirgen, Ireland, RA Chem, India, Biophore, India and Concord Biotech, India. In each of the companies that Shri Singh has participated in, he played a lead role on the Boards of the respective companies, and helped in opening up opportunities in global markets. Cumulatively, the companies he has promoted have created over 3000 jobs with estimated market valuation in excess of Rs. 7500 crores.

Shri Singh has also been active in various charitable and non-profit organizations. Aside from supporting these organizations, he has served on the Board of Directors of one of Canada's leading hospitals, St. Michaels Hospital, Toronto; and on the Advisory Board of Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce. He is currently a Governor on the Governing Board of North York General Hospital, Ontario and Director of the Sikh Foundation of Canada.

For his exceptional entrepreneurial and leadership achievements, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Shri Harcharan (Harry) Singh.

Shri Puttige Ramadas obtained his B.E. in mechanical engineering from Karnataka Regional Engineering College (KREC), Surathkal (today's NITK) in 1968. He did his M.Tech. in Machine Tools from IIT Madras, in 1970.

He started his career as a Design Engineer in Machine Tool Company of India, HMT Bangalore and was a member of the first NC Lathe Design team in 1972 – 73. He was the recipient of the first “Best Design” Award given to the best machine tool design for a machine exhibited in the Indian Machine Tool Exhibition (IMTEX) 1979, for the Slant Bed CNC Lathe. He also led a design team to design and develop the first CNC Cylindrical Grinding Machine. He has presented many papers in the AIMTDR conferences. After serving HMT for 13 years, he joined MMC, Calcutta as their Chief Design Engineer for a year.

He joined Widia India Ltd in 1984 (presently Kennametal India Limited) in Bangalore to start their Special Purpose Machine Tool (SPM) Division where he developed many machine tools like CNC Lathes, Machining Centres, Deep Hole Drilling Machines, Creep Feed Grinding Machines, an array of SPMs and 6 Axes Tool and Cutter Grinders. During his leadership, Widia SPM Division (WIDMA) got the “Best Exhibit” award in IMTEX 1986 and, “Best Design” and “Best Exhibit” award in 1989 IMTEX, thus in 1990 making Widia the Leader in the manufacture of SPMs in India. He later joined Mysore Kirloskar Ltd, Harihar, as their Vice President – Engineering where he upgraded the features of many CNC Machines and developed many new products.

He started ACE Manufacturing Systems Ltd. (AMS) along with the promoters of ACE Designers Ltd. (the undisputed leader in manufacturing CNC Turning Centres in India) to produce Machining Centres in 1994. Under his leadership, AMS received the “Best Design” and “Best Exhibit” awards in four consecutive IMTEX exhibitions since 1995 till 2002. Due to his strong conviction and vision, AMS is the largest manufacturer of Vertical Machining Centres in the country and has become the most successful Machine Tool Company in India with more than 30% average annual growth. It is on its way to becoming a strong player in the International market.

Apart from the above, AMS has received many awards, including “Best Supplier” award from Honda Motorcycle & Scooters Ltd., Royal Enfield as well as many others.

Shri Ramadas has been honoured with various awards during his professional life. Recently he became the first person to be honoured with the “Kaigarika Ratna” award from Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association (KASSIA). He was honoured with “IMTMA-Premier Outstanding Entrepreneur award”, by Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers Association (IMTMA). He is the first Industrialist born and brought up in Karnataka to get this award and recognition. He is presently the President of Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers Association (IMTMA), a national level organisation of Machine Tool Builders in the country. He is on the Governing Council of educational institutions, like PESIT University, Bangalore, Madhya Vadiraja Insitute of Technology, Bantakal, Udupi. He has instituted a chair in Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras to promote Research, Design and Manufacturing of Machine Tools in 2017 with a grant of Rs 50 lakhs.

He was awarded the “Karnataka Rajyothsava Award 2018”, by Govt of Karnataka on 29th November 2018 for his contribution to the society.

For his exceptional achievements in the field of Machine Tools and his contributions as the MD of AMS, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Shri Puttige Ramadas.

Shri Swaminathan Sivakumar graduated from IIT Madras in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering. He obtained his Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1989. Shri Sivakumar joined Intel in 1990 as a lithography process engineer and has dedicated his career to the lithography area, working on photo-resists, patterning equipment, and process development. His contributions to lithography development, characterization and transfer to high-volume manufacturing have spanned every sub-micron process technology generation of Intel since 1990. He has authored or co-authored more than two dozen published papers on semiconductor processing and has been issued more than 45 patents in process architecture, lithography and patterning, with several more pending. As a heavily sought-after speaker at conferences, Shri Sivakumar has presented extensively at international technical gatherings on topics ranging from lithography to fab process technology.

He has served as Director of Lithography at Intel since 2002, leading the definition, development and deployment of Intel's next-generation lithography processes. He is also responsible for developing resolution-enhancement techniques and optical proximity-correction technologies in support of Intel's leading-edge patterning solutions. He co-invented industry-leading interconnect patterning techniques for aluminum metallization on the 180nm process, as well as the dual-damascene copper metallization on the 130nm and newer processes.

An Intel Fellow since 2002, he was named an Intel Senior Fellow in 2014. His work has been honoured three times with the Intel Achievement Awards, the company's highest technical award. His technological achievements have also been recognized outside Intel, most recently in 2016 when the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign awarded him their Distinguished Alumnus Award. In 2012, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers honoured him with the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award for his outstanding contributions to the field of lithography.

For his fundamental contributions to the art and science of lithography, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Shri Swaminathan Sivakumar.

Shri Vivek Sankaran's career illustrates how perseverance, taking risks, a mindset of learning forever, and leading with humility has led to professional and personal growth and success.

Shri Vivek Sankaran graduated from IIT Madras in 1985 with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. He obtained his Master's degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1988. In 1993, he obtained his MBA from the University of Michigan.

Shri Vivek Sankaran is the CEO of Frito-Lay North America of PepsiCo. He was appointed President and Chief Operating Officer, Frito-Lay North America, effective April 2016. Prior to that, Shri Sankaran was Chief Commercial Officer, North America from 2014 to February 2016; Chief Customer Officer for Frito-Lay North America from 2012 to 2014; Senior Vice President and General Manager, Frito-Lay North America's south business unit from 2011 to 2012; and Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Development from 2009 to 2010. Prior to joining PepsiCo in 2009, Shri Sankaran was a partner at McKinsey & Company, where he advised Fortune 100 companies with a focus on retail and high tech. He also co-led North America's purchasing and supply management practice for McKinsey. Before working for McKinsey, he served as a Service Engineer for Xerox and a Manufacturing Engineer for Bekaert.

Shri Sankaran serves on the board of Safe Water Network, a non-profit organization that develops sustainable water solutions in India and Ghana. He has been elected to the board of Guardian Insurance and as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), a leading trade association of the $2.1 trillion food, beverage and consumer products industry in July 2018.

For showing excellence in management and for reaching a senior leadership position at PepsiCo,IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Shri Vivek Sankaran.

Kaushik Bhattacharya is Howell N. Tyson, Sr., Professor of Mechanics and Professor of Materials Science as well as Vice-Provost (Research) at the California Institute of Technology. He received his B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1986, his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1991 and received post-doctoral training at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences during 1991-1993. He joined Caltech in 1993. He has held visiting positions at Cornell University, Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, Max-Planck-Institute at Leipzig, Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge, Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Cambridge.

He is internationally recognized for his contributions to understanding the mechanics and physics active materials, including shape-memory alloys, ferroelectrics and nematic elastomers, the mechanics of heterogeneous materials, fracture and failure and multiscale modelling. His 140+ publications and 3+ patents have had a major impact on education, research and industrial practice in engineering sciences – in particular on the disciplines of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sciences as well as Applied Mathematics. Bhattacharya has received the Warner T. Koiter Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, Young Investigator Prize from the Society of Engineering Science, the Special Achievements Award in Applied Mechanics from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. He is a fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a recipient of the Graduate Student Council Teaching and Mentoring Award at Caltech. He has delivered numerous plenary, keynote and named lectures including the Midwest Mechanics Lecturer for 2006-07 (10 universities), Southwest Mechanics Lecturer for 2007-08 (5 universities) and Spanish Mechanics Lecturer in 2013 (5 universities).

He served as the fifth editor of the prestigious Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids from 2004 to 2015. Currently, he serves on the editorial board of the Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Engineering Science and is the founding Program Director of the SIAM Activity Group on the Mathematical Aspects of Materials Science. Since 2008, he has been the Executive Officer of the Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering. He has supervised 29 doctoral students, mentored 22 postdoctoral scholars and hosted numerous visiting scholars, many of whom hold leadership positions in academics, industry and national laboratories. He has served as a consultant for Boston Scientific Corporation, advising them on the design of super-elastic implantable medical devices, assisted AGA Medical Corporation in interviewing and recruiting research engineers and helping them develop an in-house expertise in shape-memory and superelastic technologies, provided training for engineers at Oromco who were involved in developing a new class of orthodontic wires and assisted Medtronic Inc. in developing a core-competence in shape-memory alloys. He is currently working with the Nitinol Development Corporation on the fatigue of these materials.

For his ground-breaking achievements in education, research and industrial practice in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sciences, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Kaushik Bhattacharya.

Prof. Srinivas Devadas graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1985, and later, with a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. In 1988, he obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his outstanding and widely cited research, recognized by several top awards from both IEEE and ACM due to his pioneering work on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs).

He has had an exceptional teaching and mentoring career of over 30 years as a professor in the EECS Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), lecturing in a large number of subjects and recently sole-authoring a well-received introductory programming textbook (Programming for the Puzzled, 2017). As a crown feather, he was awarded MIT's two top teaching awards (the MacVicar Fellowship, and the Baker Award), and the top teaching award from MIT's School of Engineering (the Bose award).

Prof. Devadas' academic leadership includes serving as Associate Head and Interim Head of the EECS Department at MIT for six years with a key role in architecting a joint degree program with biology, and also designing and introducing a very popular computer science minor at MIT. His research (which has spawned 23 patents) has translated into a successful company, Verayo. Prof. Devadas' pioneering work on low-cost cryptographic hardware authentication has had a wide impact. Prof. Devadas founded Verayo in 2005 to commercialize this technology; Verayo has sold tens of millions of RFID Arbiter PUFs. Academically, many conferences (e.g. CCS, DAC, CHES, HOST) include PUFs in their call for papers. DARPA funds several organizations to build PUFs, and work on PUFs now takes place in many universities.

Earlier in his career, Prof. Devadas received much recognition for his work on low-power circuit design and computer-aided circuit design. He subsequently also developed a processor (AEGIS) that can use untrusted memory securely and remains secure even with an untrusted operating system. On the teaching front, he has been a veritable powerhouse, responsible for developing and teaching several subjects that have now become foundational in MIT's CS curriculum, and taken by several hundred students each year. He has also developed sophisticated automated grading tools for software courses. In addition, he leads the CS branch of MIT PRIMES, which brings talented high school students in for summer research.

For his exemplary contributions to research in distributed computing, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Prof. Srinivas Devadas.

Prof. Srinivas Peeta obtained his B. Tech. in Civil engineering from IIT Madras in 1988. He went on to pursue his M.S. in the same discipline at Caltech in 1989 and earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (transportation) from the University of Texas, Austin.

He has worked as a faculty member of the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University during which time he has been keen to both propagate knowledge to the next generation and find its application for advancements in the US and in India. After 24 years at Purdue University, where he was also the Jack and Kay Hockema Professor from 2015-2018, Prof. Peeta is now the Frederick R. Dickerson Chair and Professor, School of Civil and Environmental engineering and H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems engineering, Georgia Tech. He has also headed various centres for studying and improving transport, which includes being the director of NEXTRANS Centre, the USDOT Federal Region 5 University Transportation Center from 2006-2018, where he dispensed duties related to research, education, outreach and administration. From 2007-2013, he served as chair of the Transportation Network Modeling Committee of the Transportation Research Board of the U.S. National Academies.

His research work is prolific with over 370 technical publications, focused on the application of control theory, fundamental techniques in operations research, and advanced computational methods applied to large-scale transportation networks. His work in dynamic traffic assignment is considered a standard for research reference. He has won numerous accolades for his research, publications and mentoring. He was a special guest and distinguished participant at 'Move-Global Mobility Summit' organized by the Government of India in 2018, where he was a keynote speaker and panelist on reinventing public transport. He has also worked on programmes and curricula to train students. INFORMS Transportation Science Best Dissertation Award (1994), NSF CAREER Award (1997), Purdue's Seed for Success Award (2007-2013), ASCEWalter Huber Research Prize (2009), Visiting Distinguished Scholar, Taiwan (2009), UniSA Distinguished Researcher Award, Australia (2010), Purdue College of Engineering Mentoring Award (2012), Honorary Professor(2015) from Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China are among the numerous awards he has received for the great work he has done in his field, both as a mentor and researcher. In addition to him being decorated, five of his students have won best dissertation prizes as well as several awards.

For his contribution to the field of Civil Engineering and Transportation in particular and his excellence as a research mentor, IIT Madras and its alumni are proud to confer this award upon Prof. Srinivas Peeta.