Awards and Achievements

December 17, 2017 0 comments ISMAANA Admin

Honorary Membership
Honorary Membership is conferred on individuals for outstanding service to SPE and/or in recognition of distinguished scientific or engineering achievement in fields encompassed in SPE’s technical scope. Honorary Membership is the highest honor SPE confers upon an individual and is limited to 0.1% of SPE’s total membership.
This year two IIT(ISM) alumni received this prestigious award – Akhil Datta-Gupta and Anil Kumar.
Akhil Datta-Gupta is a professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University. He worked for BP Exploration and Research from 1986 to 1990 and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1992 to 1994 before joining Texas A&M in 1994. Datta-Gupta was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2012 for “developing the theory and practice of streamline simulation for fluid flow in heterogeneous reservoirs.”
Datta-Gupta received SPE Distinguished Membership in 2001 and several other honors from SPE, including the John Franklin Carll and Lester C. Uren awards. He was named an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 1999–2000, a Distinguished Author in 2000, an outstanding technical editor in 1996, and was awarded the Ferguson certificate in 2000 and 2006. He has published more than 100 peer reviewed technical papers and 4 books, including an SPE textbook. Datta-Gupta holds a PhD in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas.

Anil Kumar, recipient of SPE Honorary Membership Award, is the founder and president of Omak Technologies LLC in Plano, Texas, which provides petroleum engineering consulting services. He is a pioneer of pressure derivative technology, which has become a significant technology platform in transient well testing. He served as chairman and associate professor of petroleum engineering at the New Mexico Institute of Mining Technology and helped found the institute’s Petroleum Recovery Research Center. Kumar has worked in senior positions at Gulf Oil, Chevron, Mobil, Devon Energy of Indonesia, and Petro China International Jakarta. As a senior vice president at Reliance Industries, he built a 60-member subsurface team for India’s first deepwater development in KG Basin Block-D6. He has published numerous papers, supervised theses, and coauthored several books, including Gas Well Test Analysis Under Water Drive Conditions.

Kumar is a recipient of the SPE Reservoir Engineering award in 1997, the SPE Formation Evaluation award in 2013, and the SPE/AIME Anthony F. Lucas award in 2015. He received SPE Distinguished Membership in 2001 and served as a Distinguished Lecturer in 1995–1996. He has served on the SPE board, the JPT editorial board, and on numerous SPE committees and events boards as chairman, co-chairman, member, and as a keynote speaker. Kumar has presented numerous technical short courses for SPE and PetroSkills.
Kumar holds a BSc with top honors from the Indian School of Mines (now Indian Institute of Technology), an MS from Louisiana State University, and a PhD from Stanford University, all in petroleum engineering.

Mr. Sidhartha Sur receives SPE Distinguished Membership from Society of Petroleum Engineers at SPE’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held 9-11 October in San Antonio, TX. Sur is being recognized for his instrumental leadership in the development of technically and economically viable, safe thermal EOR methods of in situ combustion, cyclic steam stimulation and steam flood for increasing recovery from the heavy oil belt of India and Colombia.

Mr. Sur is currently Executive Director – Head of Institute of Reservoir Studies in ONGC at Ahmedabad, India. Earlier he was Chief of Corporate Planning & Strategy. In ONGC, he has been responsible for development activities for all fields of ONGC encompassing conventional & EOR means. He obtained Bachelor of Technology in Petroleum Engineering from Indian School of Mines, India in 1980.

Mr. Sur was instrumental in placing ONGC and India in particular on the world map of EOR through successful application of In Situ Combustion process in Balol & Santhal fields. During 2010-12, he served as CTO and CEO of Mansarovar Energy Colombia Ltd, a JV of OVL and Sinopec involved in heavy oil exploitation through Steam injection.
He served as SPE Distinguished Lecturer for the year 2009-10. In 2012, he was awarded with SPE Latin America & Caribbean Regional award on Completion Optimisation & Technology. He was awarded in 2016 “Distinguished Alumnus Award” of IIT(ISM) Dhanbad, India. He has numerous publications to his credit in SPE & in other National & International forums, mainly in Air Injection, Steam Injection and Gas Injection processes.

Aman Gaurav, an undergraduate student, represented IIT(ISM) and presented his research paper on “Microbial Profile Modification: Application of Biotechnology in Improving Oil Recovery” during the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, 9-11 Oct at San Antonio, Texas, USA. Aman was awarded second prize amongst the regional contest winners from 14 different regions across the globe. Aman also won the SPE South Asia Regional Student Paper Contest at the Undergraduate level, held during SPE Oil and Gas India Conference and Exhibition, 4-6 April at Mumbai, India.
(Reference:https://www.spe.org/en/events/atce/media/atce-international-awards/)

President’s Note

April 14, 2017 0 comments ISMAANA Admin

Dear ISMAANA members:

It is a great pleasure for me to communicate with you as your Chairman. We are taking steps to assist our Alma Mater in a positive and impactful way. We, as the ISMAANA Executive Committee, have developed our goals and objectives for the next two years as given below:

  1. Granting eight (8) scholarships at ISM and executing the scholarship program effectively in a sustainable manner – this program has been running well for the last two years.
  2. Communicating effectively and often with our Alma Mater and the ISMAANA members located in North America – newsletters are being published regularly and we are working on our web system and/or joining other forms of social media to communicate with our members and ISM family worldwide.
  3. Granting and administering faculty grants at ISM. This is to encourage the ISM faculty members to contribute significantly to teaching excellence at ISM.
  4. Other items as considered pertinent by the ISMAANA members and the Executive Committee.

The ISMAANA Board has worked closely with ISM in executing the scholarship program. The ISM Director, Dr. D. C. Panigrahi, and our Executive Committee are pleased with this program.

I am very proud of the millennials like Dr. Deblina Sarkar, a 2008 graduate of ISM and a postdoctoral researcher in the Synthetic Neurobiology group at MIT. Her research aims to bridge the gap between nanotechnology and synthetic biology. She invented the world’s thinnest channel sub-thermal transistor which overcomes the fundamental power limitations of present technology. Through our newsletter, I am requesting our alumni, especially millennials, to actively participate in our ISMAANA activities through participation on the board, newsletter publication, connecting thru our members, collecting their e-mails and contact information, and fund raising. Anyone interested in participating in these roles should please feel free to contact me.

I sincerely thank our publishing editors of the newsletter. Please continue publishing it every quarter, as it serves a good means to keep abreast of various ISM and ISMAANA activities. I am also requesting our members to share the newsletter with others who may not be receiving it to encourage sign-up.

I encourage each one of you to prepare articles for publication in future newsletters. If you would like to share your ideas, particularly any items related to your ISM experience (like what Mr. Atul Kumar has done in this newsletter), please feel free to send to the editors of this newsletter. Also, if you have any feedback to enhance ISMAANA’s roles in assisting our Alma Mater, please send me an e-mail.

With best wishes to you and your family members,

Ganesh Thakur (Class of 1970 Petroleum Engineering),
ISMAANA Chairman/President
Director of Energy Industry Partnerships and Distinguished Professor of Petroleum Engineering
University of Houston, Texas
2012 SPE Intl. President
Former VP & Fellow – Chevron Technology
drganeshthakur38@gmail.com

Featured Alumni – Deblina Sarkar, 2008 EE

April 14, 2017 0 comments ISMAANA Admin

Deblina Sarkar is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Synthetic Neurobiology group at MIT. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at UCSB in 2010 and 2015 respectively. She completed her B.Tech. in electronics engineering at IIT (ISM), Dhanbad in 2008. Her research aims to bridge the gap between nanotechnology and synthetic biology to create a new paradigm for computational electronics and invent disruptive technologies for neuroscience.

She invented the world’s thinnest channel sub-thermal transistor which overcomes the fundamental power limitations of present technology and leads to record power-reduction. Her research also showed for the first time that quantum mechanical transistors can lead to electrical biosensors with ultra-high sensitivity and single-molecular detectability. Recently, she has developed a technology for unprecedented expansion of brain tissue to map the biomolecular building blocks of the brain.

She is the lead author of publications in several eminent journals such as Nature, Nano Lett., ACS Nano, TED etc as well as prestigious conferences such as IEDM, DRC, IITC and has authored/coauthored about 40 papers till date. Several of her works have appeared in popular press worldwide and research highlights of Nature and Nature Nanotechnology.

Her doctoral research was accorded the Lancaster Award for the best PhD Dissertation in the field of Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Engineering at UCSB. As UCSB’s nominee for the nationwide contest, her dissertation went on to be honored as one of the top 3 dissertations throughout USA and Canada in the field of Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Engineering by the Council of Graduate Schools. She is the recipient of numerous other awards and recognitions, including the U.S. Presidential Fellowship (2008), Outstanding Doctoral Candidate Fellowship (2008), being one of three researchers worldwide to win the prestigious IEEE EDS PhD Fellowship Award (2011), a “Bright Mind” invited speaker at the KAUST-NSF conference (2015), one of three winners of the Falling Walls Lab Young Innovator’s competition at San Diego (2015), recipient of “Materials Research Society’s Graduate Student Award” (2015) and has been named a “Rising Star” in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (2015). She has also been invited to speak at TEDx and her TEDx talk “Could We Soon Augment Our Brains?” is available online.

प्रकृति के निकट: दुनिया से परे

April 14, 2017 0 comments ISMAANA Admin

कितने मीलों भटक-भटक में तुमसे मिलने आया हूँ,

ठोकर सालों खा-खा कर अब जो चाह था वो पाया हूँ,

मेरा तन्हा थका मुसाफिर मन तेरी पेशगी में लाया हूँ.

कितने मीलों भटक-भटक में तुमसे मिलने आया हूँ,

 

है भीतर का संवेग जिसे प्यार ये दुनिया कहती है,

सुना है इसी आवेश में संसार की सृष्टि रहती है,

अब जब चंद मिनटों में ही गुज़र जाते ज़माने हैं,

तुमसे तो मेरे राग पुराने हैं, जन्मों के विद्वेष मिटने हैं,

 

थोड़ी सी धूप सुनहरी भर लूं मन के अंधियारे में,

कुछ पवन चले बहकी महकी मेरे श्वासों के गलियारे में,

तब लगे की प्राण अभी भी बाकी हैं,

इस पोले अस्थि-पंजर में इंसान अभी भी बाकी है,

 

पहले आदमी से अब खुद ही से भागता हुआ मैं,

तुम संग कुछ आनंद मधुर अद्भुत सा पाता हूँ,

अब यहाँ मुझे न भूख लगे न प्यास लगे,

तुम संग दिन चढ़े उत्सव, सांझ ढले त्यौहार लगे,

 

हे शक्ति के अटल पुंज, इस राख का तुमसे विनय है,

सम्पन्नता का ओजस निराधार जीवन के क्षय से फूट पड़े,

और पूर्ण विलय हो तेरा मेरा,

इन प्राणों के समापन से पहले.


About the author: Tushar Gupta self-taught writer and is passionate about Hindi poetry. He graduated from Indian School of Mines in 2012 with B.Tech in Mining Engineering and worked in the industry for a couple of years. He then graduated with Masters of Science degree from University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2016.