Former student of IIT–Madras becomes its director

“The institute will find solutions to pressing problems of society”

Bhaskar Ramamurthi. Photo: Special Arrangement

Bhaskar Ramamurthi has been appointed the new director of Indian Institute of Technology-Madras.

“The institute will continue to focus on fundamental and translational research given the development imperative of the country and find solutions to the pressing problems facing society,” said the professor of electrical engineering.

President Pratibha Patil, in her capacity as Visitor of IIT-Madras had approved the appointment of Prof. Ramamurthi. This was conveyed to the IIT-M Board of Governors Chairman Prof. M.M. Sharma on Thursday.

“The chairman informed me this morning. I will assume charge on Friday morning,” the new director said. To him, IIT-M, along with the oldest IITs, has to elevate itself to the next stage in fundamental and translational research as both were required.

It would continue to pursue fundamental research contributing to global knowledge pool and leverage innovation and technology to produce visible success stories that would impact society in a positive way in sectors like education and agriculture.

“People are looking up to the IITs to improve the quality of their lives, especially in rural India,” Prof. Ramamurthi said optimistic of delivering products and solutions suited to the inclusive growth model of the country.

Research would also be a major thrust area. Most of the IITs have doubled the Ph.Ds in the past five years but still the output was modest compared to that of China and doctoral scholars were required for industry and teaching, he pointed out.

Dean of Planning at IIT-Madras till now, he graduated from IIT-M in 1980 with a B.Tech in Electronics Engineering and then went on to pursue his M.S and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. After obtaining his doctorate, he joined the AT&T Bell Laboratories in the United States where he worked on problems in indoor wireless communications and joined the faculty at the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT-M in 1986.

His research area involves modulation and coding for mobile communications, wireless communication networks and design and implementation of wireless local loop systems.

He is a founding member of the Telecommunications and Computer Networking Group (TeNeT) that has come up with several products like Rural ATM, medical diagnostic kit and Indic computing to name a few.