IITK Alumni amongst Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awardees

Here is the email (edited) we all received from Dean.

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This year, three of our alumni have made the Institute proud through their outstanding academic contributions while working in three different institutions in India. They have been awarded the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for the year 2011. The details are as follows:

1.  Dr. Sirshendu De, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, has been awarded in the area of Engineering Sciences. Earlier, he has also received several other awards and honors, including Fellow of INAE (in 2011), and IIChE-Herdillia Award (in 2010). Professor De has obtained three degrees from IIT Kanpur in Chemical Engineering (B.Tech. in 1989, M.Tech. in 1992, and Ph.D. in 1996). For project work in all three programs, his supervisor was Prof. P K Bhattacharya.
2. Dr. Shiraz Minwalla, Professor, Department of Theoretical Physics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, has been awarded in the area of Physical Sciences. His earlier recognitions include Swarnajayanti Fellowship (DST, 2005) and Fellow of IAS, Bangalore (2011). Shiraz Minwalla was an Integrated MSc student in Physics and graduated from IIT Kanpur in 1996. He was the recipient of the President's Gold Medal. He got his PhD from Princeton, and then moved to Harvard, first as a junior fellow, and then became an Assistant Professor. Later he joined TIFR, Mumbai, where he has been since then. Shiraz Minwalla is a string theorist and has made notable contributions in many areas. Shiraz is a very inspiring teacher and his lectures are available on the web.
3. Dr. Mahan Maharaj (formerly Mahan Mitra), Associate Professor, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, Belur Math, Howrah, has been awarded in the area of Mathematical Sciences. Dr. Mahan obtained his M.Sc. (Integrated) from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of IIT Kanpur in 1992, and obtained his PhD from University of California, Berkeley, in 1997. Dr. Mahan's research interests are at the interface of Kleinian groups, hyperbolic geometry and geometric group theory.

Hearty congratulations to these outstanding alumni!