Former Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was conferred with the Netaji Award 2022 by Netaji Research Bureau on January 23.
Consul General of Japan in Kolkata Nakamura Yutaka received the honour on behalf of Mr. Abe at a function at the Elgin Road residence of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his 125th birth anniversary.
Dr S Balachandran, a native of Uthukuli, was conferred an MBE (Member of the British Empire) on Monday. Along with two other doctors, Balachandran was given the honour for services to the nation during the pandemic.
peaking to TNIE, Balachandran’s brother-in-law M Ravi said, “Balachandran studied at the Uthukuli Government High Secondary, and joined Thanjavur Medical College. He completed MD and Diploma in Anaesthesia there in 1989. He served in Karur Government Hospital and Ramanathapuram Government Hospital for several years before moving to the UK.” Now, he leads the board for infection control at the same university.
Signalling a new era, professors with strong industry links and policy experience have been appointed the new Directors of four of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology.
At IIT Madras, the country’s top educational institution according to domestic rankings, the next Director will be V. Kamakoti, who designed the first indigenously-developed microprocessor for use in communications and defence sectors.
The Professor of Computer Science and Engineering is currently the associate dean for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research at IIT Madras.
“Our immediate priority would be augmenting the skill set for indigenous technology development,” he said, according to an official statement.
IIT Delhi’s next director will be Rangan Banerjee, currently the Forbes Marshall Chair Professor in IIT Bombay’s Department of Energy Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay, which he helped to start in 2007.
With academic interests in energy management, planning and policy, as well as hydrogen energy and fuel cells, Professor Banerjee was a member of the Working Group on New and Renewable Energy for the Eleventh and Twelfth Five-Year Plans and a member of the Planning Commission’s Integrated Energy Policy.
IIT Bombay is also the current home of IIT Indore’s next Director Suhas S. Joshi. With a background in production engineering, he started his career as an engine development manager at Tata Motors before shifting into academia.
He currently heads the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Bombay, holds the Rahul Bajaj Chair position and is also Dean of Alumni and Corporate Relations at a time when the institution has raked in record donations from its alumni.
According to his profile on the IIT Bombay website, Dr. Joshi has undertaken 38 projects sponsored by aerospace, nuclear, defence and private organisations in India and spearheaded the establishment of an aerospace research centre in partnership with Boeing and the Central government.
Laxmidhar Behera, a Robotics professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, has been appointed the next Director of IIT Mandi.
He heads the Intelligent Systems and Control Laboratory at IIT Kanpur and focuses on developing automation solutions to industrial and domestic problems.
Recent projects include the development of a bio-signal enabled control of a robotic wheelchair sponsored by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council and a Central government sponsored project on robotics in agriculture.
Ad man Gerson da Cunha, a multi-faceted personality, who was also very passionate about civic activism in later years, died here on Friday. He was 92.
Da Cunha, who started his career as a journalist working for the Press Trust of India after graduating in science and then jumped into advertising, was associated with a slew of platforms engaged in civic activism, including AGNI (Action for Good Governance and Networking in India).
V.S. Pathania took over as the 24th Director General (DG) of the Indian Coast Guard on December 31 from Krishnaswamy Natarajan who retired from service.
“The Flag Officer is an alumni of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, and the National Defence College, New Delhi. He is a qualified helicopter pilot and holds a master’s degree in defence & strategic studies from the University of Madras,” the Coast Guard said. “He has also undergone specialisation in search and rescue and port operations with U.S. Coast Guard.”
Mr. Pathania is the recipient of President’s Tatrakshak Medal for Distinguished service, Tatrakshak Medal for gallantry and DG Coast Guard Commendation.
The founder of World Konkani Centre, Mangaluru, Basti Vaman Shenoy passed away on January 2, 2022 due to age related illness.
Mr. Shenoy had served as the president of Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Academy from 1997 to 2001 and had strived for the inclusion of Konkani in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
U.S. official Uzra Zeya has been appointed the country’s new Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues. She will hold the position concurrently with her current role as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said via a statement.
In a twist to that claim, Portugal is now led by people of Indian descent with family ties to the former colony: Prime Minister Antonio Costa, Finance Minister Joao Leao and Planning Minister Nelson de Sousa.
“I am very proud of visiting my father’s land as prime minister, and especially the first prime minister of Indian origin in the European Union. This visit has a strong emotional side in the personal motivation,” Costa said during a visit to India in 2017.
Costa’s grandfather Luis Afonso Maria da Costa was from Margao, where his relatives still live and his 200-year-old ancestral home is located, according to the Portuguese American Journal.
Luis Costa emigrated to what was then another Portuguese colony, Mozambique, where the prime minister’s father Orlando da Costa was born in the capital Maputo.
The elder Costa was a writer and his son released an English translation of his book, Sem Flores Nem Coroas (Without Flowers or Wreaths) while visiting India.
Known as the ‘Father of Fibre Optics’, Dr Narinder Singh Kapany had over 100 patents under his name.
For someone who was hailed as one of the seven unsung heroes of the 20th century for his Nobel Prize-deserving invention in 1999 by Fortune magazine, Narinder Singh Kapany remains relatively unknown.
The Indian American scientist was a multi-faceted personality—physicist, innovator, entrepreneur, farmer, philanthropist, and an avid art collector.
he also invented Retinal laser coagulation treatment. He became the first Indian Sikh to take a company public in Silicon Valley.
In 1967, Kapany created the Sikh Foundation that pioneered the display of Sikh Arts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and established the first permanent Sikh Art Gallery in the United States and Canada
Bhutan on Friday conferred the Order of the Druk Gyalpo, its highest civilian honour, on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This was announced on the occasion of the 114th national day of Bhutan.