Amrutur V. Anilkumar will serve as a 2014-2016 guest professor in an advisory capacity at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGn).
Anilkumar, professor of the practice of mechanical engineering and adviser and director of the Vanderbilt Aerospace Club, has been associated with IITGn as a member of the organizing committee of the Roddam Narasimha Distinguished Seminar Series.
“I’m extremely pleased to accept a Guest Professorship appointment at IITGn. It gives me an opportunity to use visits to IITGn to interact with faculty and students in energy research, engineering design projects, curricular and co-curricular innovations,” said Anilkumar, whose research interests are in the areas of drop dynamics, aero-propulsion and energy conversion.
IITGn is a relatively new public technology institute, one of eight new institutes established by the government of India under the brand-cluster of 16 Indian Institutes of Technology. IITGn originally was mentored by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, founded in 1958, and ranked one of the top engineering colleges in India. IITB is second oldest institute in the IIT system.
“We are excited to have Professor Anilkumar participate in building a great university in India, and the contributions he has already made are deeply appreciated,” said Professor Sudhir Jain, director of IITGn, a prominent earthquake engineer and a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.
Anilkumar has been a co-investigator of the drop dynamics experiments (DPM) flown on the USML-1 and USML-2 Space Shuttle Missions (1992, 1995), a co-investigator of the pore formation and mobility experiments (PFMI) and the in-Space soldering experiments (ISSI) conducted on the International Space Station (2002, 2004).
Anilkumar earned a B.Tech degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (Chennai), a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and aeronautics, both from the California Institute of Technology. Anilkumar joined the Vanderbilt School of Engineering faculty in 1988.