IIT Bombay's Faculty Alumni Network (FAN) partnered with the Heritage Fund and the Boston Alumni Chapter to host the 6th FAN Research Symposium in Cambridge, MA on October 9, 2011. The theme of the day-long symposium was "Materials for Energy" and it was attended by over 50 participants, including several IIT-Bombay alumni, who were graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at various U.S. institutions. The symposium organizer was Professor Balaji Narasimhan, the Vlasta Klima Balloun Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Associate Dean of Research at Iowa State University (B. Tech, ChE, 1992) and it included two plenary talks and six invited talks, which were equally distributed between IIT Bombay faculty members and U.S.-based FAN members.

 

Attendees to FAN 2011 were welcomed by Dwarika Agarwal, Raj Laad and Anil Saigal from the Boston Chapter and Ram Kelkar, President of the IIT Bombay Heritage Fund.

 

The first plenary talk was delivered by Professor Vinayak Dravid of Northwestern University (B. Tech, MetE, 1984), who spoke about the intricate relationship between science, technology, education, and policy in the energy sector. Ramesh Ramamoorthy, the Plato Malozemoff Chair at the University of California Berkeley and the Program Manager of the Department of Energy's SunShot Program, delivered the second plenary, which was focused on the DOE's efforts in solar energy. Both plenaries sparked off great discussions, and laid the platform for a focused bilateral Indo-US effort in the solar energy area, in which IIT-Bombay could play a central role, based on the presence of the National Center for Photovoltaic Research and Education at IIT-Bombay.

 

The six invited speakers included Professors Prita Pant, Arup Bhattacharyya, and Juzer Vasi (B. Tech., EE, 1981) from IIT-Bombay, and three alumni, Professor Nitin Padture (B. Tech, MetE, 1985) of Ohio State University, Professor Srikanth Gopalan (B. Tech, MetE, 1990) of Boston University, and Dr. Narendra Joshi (B. Tech, ME, 1979) of General Electric. They spoke about areas ranging from spintronics, gas turbines, shape memory alloys, carbon nanotubes, solar energy, fuel cells, organic electronics, and energy policy. In addition to the faculty, IIT-Bombay was represented at the symposium by Director Devang Khakhar, Deputy Director HS Pandalai, Dean of Faculty AK Suresh, and Dean of International Relations Subhasis Chaudhuri. The symposium concluded with a roundtable discussion on bilateral Indo-US research opportunities in the energy sector.

 

The FAN event was preceded by an alumni reunion event on the evening of October 8, which was also attended by in excess of 50 participants. IIT-Bombay alumnus, Jit Saxena (B. Tech., EE, 1965), delivered an engaging keynote speech on his experience as a technology innovator and entrepreneur.