Introduction

To foster a high level of creativity and innovation among its students IIT (ISM) has undertaken the development of a Tinkering and Innovation Lab at the campus. A small step in raising the ranking of our Alma Mater as one of the top ten colleges in India.

Objective

To provide an innovative workspace for students to experiment, learn and transform their ideas into real-time engineering projects leading eventually to products, services, and patents.

Background

Leading engineering institutes all over the world starting from MIT’s Fabrication Laboratory (fab lab), Harvard’s Innovation Laboratory(I-lab), and many of the IIT’s have similar innovation labs. It has been felt for many years that IIT (ISM) needed a similar lab at the campus to provide hands-on experience to students to work on new and creative ideas that could ultimately lead to new products and services.

Project Development

After a year of proposal development that included a visit to other innovation labs, IIT (ISM) developed a detailed proposal to build a world-class facility at the campus.

The lab will be located in one of the floors in the newly constructed GRIHA Compliant building inside the institute. The approx. floor space of the proposed Centre will be about 10,000 sq. feet. The building along with all the facilities and equipment shall be shared by all the students of the Institute.

Some of the major facilities and equipment that the lab would provide are 3D Printers, 3D Scanners, CNC Lathes, sheet metal cutting, welding and carpentry tools, CO2 Laser Acrylic cutter, and soldering and woodworking stations.

Other electronic and computer equipment includes GPU workstations, Electronics/robotics workstations, IoT (Internet of things) workstations, multilayer PCB printers, and laser workstation.

In short, this lab will have all the necessary equipment to build a prototype of any innovation. Work on equipment acquisition has already begun.

Project Cost and funding:

Cost estimate of the project is slightly above US $1.2 million. Mr. Naresh Vashisht (PE’67) President Omimex Resources, Fort Worth TX and ISMAANA member has generously committed to provide the required funds for the lab. The lab shall be named “Naresh Vashisht Centre for Tinkering & Innovation”.

Dr. Piyush Dutta (60’Mining) has signed an MOU with IIT (ISM) to award one annual innovation and invention prize to a final year student or jointly to final year students if such a selection is made. The award is to be given for the best original conceptual idea presentation, report, and prototype demonstration that will improve the mining technologies. The amount of the annual innovation prize is Rs. 100,000. The process is in place to make the first such award during the Basant event in February 2020.

Dallas area alumni held a reception for ISMAANA President Dipak Sarkar during his visit to Dallas. The reception was held on September 8, 2019, at India 101 restaurant in Irving. Twenty-six alumni, spouses and guests were present at the reception. Dipak made a presentation on current ISMAANA activities and answered a few questions. The reception was organized by ISMAANA board member Dr. Anil Kumar (67’PE). Among senior alumni present were Dr. Mohan Seth (60’App Geol.), Dr. Ram Agarwal (61’PE), Krishna Gupta (63’PE), Dr. Anil Kumar (65’PE), Purna Haldar (66’App Geoph.), and Naresh Vashisht (67’PE). Many alumni from more junior batches were present with their spouses. Below are a couple of photographs from the event.

The presentation addresses trends in energy consumption, sectoral demand for energy and impact of energy usage on climate change. Dr. Arya works for IHS Marketing whose projection over the next 30 years shows plateauing of oil demand, as alternative transportation sources gain market share. According to this forecast coal demand declines gradually, natural gas use grows strongly, replacing oil and coal in all sectors and renewables gain an important share of the global market.
IHS Marketing also projects rapid improvement is renewable cost, global cooperation for climate and environmental policy and changing consumer preferences drive greater conservation and changing demand for various energy resources. The presentation also addresses India’s energy use, trends, and outlook over the next 30 years. You can access the full presentation here.

In conjunction with the 2019 SPE Annual Technical Meeting in Calgary, Canada, we had an ISM Alumni Dinner on Monday, September 30, 2019 evening. A total of 22 alumni participated in the dinner. Thanks to our Calgary based alumni Hemanta Sarma, Navpreet Singh, and Gaurav Sharma, for their efforts, dinner was a great success.

Following is the list of alumni (with their phone numbers* and e-mail addresses) who participated in the dinner:

1. Gaurav Sharma (2012 Pet): 403-6×1-xxxx, gaurav14907@gmail.com
2. Navpreet Singh (2014 Pet); 403-6×9-xxxx, navpreet.sigh.ism@yahoo.com
3. Vineet Prakash (2014 Pet): 832-2×7-xxxx, vineet.prakash@gmail.com
4. Varun Pathak (2006 Pet): 403-9×6-xxxx, varunpathak@gmail.com
5. Hemanta Sarma (1978 Pet); 403-2×0-xxxx, hemanta.sarma@ucalgary.ca
6. Umesh Prasad (1987 Mining): 281-5×8-xxxx, umesh_prasad@yahoo.com
7. Manuj Gupta (2004 Mining): 403-8×5-xxxx, manuj@ualberta.ca
8. Mintu Bose (1968 Pet): 403-4×1-xxxx, bose_m@hotmail.com
9. Ashok Signal (1963 Pet): 403-9×5-xxxx, singhal.canada@gmail.com
10. Sarwesh Kumar (2003 Pet): 985-3×3-xxxx, sarwesh.ism@gmail.com
11. Vivek Swami (2006 Pet): 403-8×8-xxxx, vivek.swami@gmail.com
12. Ashish Kumar (2004 Pet): 403-4×1-xxxx, ashish7398@gmail.com
13. Bhoj Raj Choudhary (2005 Pet): 403-9×5-xxxx, bhojraj@gmail.com
14. Hari Saripalli (2009 Pet): 403-4×2-xxxx, kaustik.saripalli@gmail.com
15. Rahul Kumar (2005 Pet): 91-9954x8xxxx, rahul_kumar@oilindia.in
16. Ashutosh N. Pandey (2006 PE): 91 7042x8xxxx, ashutosh_pandey@oilindia.in
17. Saloma Yomdo (1994 Pet): 91-9435x3xxxx, saloma@oilindia.in
18. Sanjeev Malik (1993 Pet): 968-95x2xxxx, sm1071@gmail.com
19. Jitendra Kikani (1984 Pet): 713-3×2-xxxx, jkik@chevron.com
20. Anil Kumar (1965 Pet): 469-4×1-xxxx, kumarphd@aol.com
21. Prithvi S. Chauhan (2020 Pet): 91-8830x8xxxx, chauhanprithviraj@gmail.com
22. Jitendra Avasthi (1966 Geol, 1967 Mining): 832-7×6-xxxx, jayavasthi@gmail.com
Photographs taken at the dinner follows (courtesy of Sarwesh Kumar).

*Phone number of attendees have been masked for privacy reasons, please reach out to contact@ismaana.org for any specific requests.

Dear ISMAANA members:
We wish happy summer to all our alumni. May your days be full of enjoyable activities and summer fun.

ISMAANA continues to work on many projects to assist our alma mater as well as our north America based alumni. During the current academic year (2018-19), 38 merit cum means scholarships were awarded to IIT (ISM) students. This is in addition to 8 merit scholarship awarded to two fourth year students in four earth science branches based on their academic performance during the first 3 years. More details are provided under ISMAANA scholarship programs.

Detail plans are being developed to build an innovation and tinkering lab at IIT (ISM). One of our North America based alumni has generously agreed to fund this project. As the projects get better defined we plan to make a detailed announcement.

ISMAANA newsletter is being published on a regular basis to exchange communication with our North America based alumni. Our thanks to Vishal Gupta, Secretary, for this sincere effort.

An alumni database development program is ongoing for last two years with dedicated efforts of Gaurav Seth. If you know of any alumnus who is not receiving our newsletter, please let Gaurav know.

We have started a fund-raising program in 2018 to enhance our endowment funds to continue and expand the merit scholarship program and to fund outstanding research projects at our alma mater. Additional funds are also needed to help IIT (ISM) students attend international seminars and conferences. Scarcity of funds limits us from considering many such requests during the year. We seek your financial contribution to enhance ISMAANA endowment fund. You may write your tax deductible donation check to “Indian School of Mines Alumni” and send it to our treasurer Atul Kumar at 46 Huntsman Horn Circle, The Woodlands , TX 77380..

If you have any feedback to improve ISMAANA’s role or would like to contribute articles or news events or any other comments, please send us a note.

Thank you.
Sincerely
Dipak Sarkar
President ISMAANA (’67 PE)

Currently ISMAANA has two types of ongoing scholarship programs.

1. Merit Scholarships: Eight final year students were awarded ISMAANA merit scholarship earlier this year. ISMAANA started these scholarships in 2015 to recognize top two students in four earth science branches based on first three years’ academic performance. As our funds permit, we plan to extend these scholarships to other branches of study. The picture alongside shows merit scholarship winners receiving the award along with faculty advisers.
2. Merit cum means scholarships: These scholarships started in 2017 and currently ISMAANA has alumni commitment for 50 such scholarships that are based on family income and academic performance. Amount of these scholarships range from $1000/year to $1370/year. These scholarships are intended to mainly cover student expenses related to room, board, and transportation. During the current academic year 38 such scholarships were awarded to undergraduate students. Scholarship donors with number of committed scholarships in parenthesis are: Naresh Vashisht (20), Avinash Ahuja (10), Suresh Chugh (4), Mohinder Gulati (1), Pramod Thakur (1), Jatinder Tuli (1) Dipak Sarkar (1), Zoeb Mogri (1), Shishir Agrawal (1), Yugal Gupta (2), Mahendra Verma (2), Atul Arya (1), Sriram Muralidharan (1), and Raj Prasad (1). During 2019 we received sponsorships for 3 more scholarships, 2 from Bijay Banthia (61’PE) and one from Rana Roy (94’PE).

As news of these scholarships spread more alumni are coming forward to offer these scholarships to needy meritorious students. If you need more information about these scholarships please call Dipak Sarkar at 714 826-2810 or write to dksarkar@aol.com.

Prof. Rajeev Shekhar was appointed new director of IIT (ISM) in 2018. Here is a short bio of Dr. Shekhar from ISM website. Prof. Shekhar has 24+ years of teaching and research experience at IIT Kanpur with focus on industrial applications. Well-rounded, go-getter academic with experience ranging from institution building, engineering R&D, project management, policy, and administration. Multi-disciplinary expertise: metals extraction, manufacturing, environmental remediation, engineering economics, solar thermal energy, electric power system optimization and policy. Good understanding of process for scaling technology from laboratory to industry. Good contacts in industry, R&D organizations, and multi-lateral institutions.

We are working closely with Dr. Shekhar on various activities to serve our Alma-mater. Below is a letter of appreciation from Dr. Shekhar received in 2018.

Dear Mr. Sarkar:

Greetings from IIT (ISM) Dhanbad.

I was indeed overwhelmed to know the extent of connect between ISM and ISMAANA and their continued love and affection towards their Alma Mater. Thank you so much for your support and specifically the scholarships that you have instituted.

Our major efforts are directed towards making ISM an institute of eminence in India and substantially improve its global ranking. This requires infusion of (i) quality young faculty and (ii) visiting faculty from abroad who are willing to spend between one summer to 2 years at ISM. In addition, we need a massive upgrade of our research infrastructure.

We would need ISMAANA’s support in identifying candidates (i) who have just completed or are about to complete their PhDs and (ii) post-doctoral fellows from universities. We would also appreciate your help in identifying faculty from good universities who are willing to spend some time at ISM.

Because of shrinking government funding, we need to set-up Research Centers sponsored by Corporate in areas such as (i) energy and environment, (ii) Cyber security, (iii) Advanced manufacturing etc. We will share our proposals once they are ready.

We are making substantive changes in the role of Dean (IRAA – International Relations and Alumni Affairs). It now has three wings: (i) Alumni Affairs, (ii) Innovation and Incubation, (iii) Outreach Services. We are going in a big way to set-up our Innovation and Incubation Center to actively promote entrepreneurship and increased research collaboration with foreign institutions. Through Outreach services, the ISM community gives back to the society through (i) increased education and awareness in neighboring villages and slums, (ii) preparation for JEE, and (iii) skill development courses to increase employability.

We are also in the process of making Alumni Association color and logo as is common in the US universities. We will be taking your feedback once we have some samples.

Hopefully, sooner than later, Dean (IRAA), Prof. Dheeraj Kumar, and I would be visiting North America to connect with its alumni.

We look forward to meeting you all in person.

Best wishes!

Prof. Rajiv Shekhar
Director
IIT (ISM) Dhanbad