Department of Metallurgical Engineering, IIT (BHU), Varanasi, India

January, 2015 Volume 4 Issue 1

BHUMET News Head’s Desk

Dear friends,

This is the first newsletter that our students are bringing out, after I

have taken over as Head of Department. I am deeply conscious of the fact

that my illustrious predecessors have given leadership to the department in a

manner that is worthy of emulation. I feel, I am sitting on the shoulder of

giants. The department will progress further with the help of many of our

well - wishers and alumni. We are looking look forward to their active

involvement in the progress of our place.

I take this opportunity to apprise that the department has undergone peer review process

– a mandatory requirement for IIT system. The comments are helpful in improving research and

teaching. There are many suggestions for improving overall infrastructure as well as for the

growth of academic atmosphere. I have started taking corrective measures on some of the critical

appraisal of the peer review team. There are issues that need substantial funding, induction of

faculty at various levels and selections of quality students at M.Tech and Ph.D levels. We need

your considered opinion on some of these to spell out roadmap for our growth.

I am happy to state that departmental visit of graduates of 1989 and 1990 batches was

appropriate for reflecting on some of the issues involving growth of the department in conformity

with the status of other institutions. We are in touch with many of our illustrious alumni for getting

feedback on the points raised by peer review team to revisit the vision statement. Please do keep

in touch and wishing you all the best for a happy and prosperous new year 2015.

Sincerely Yours,

R.K.Mandal

Orientation programme for the students admitted to IIT (BHU) in the academic year 2014-

2015 was held on Friday, 25th July 2014 at Swatantrata Bhawan, BHU. The programme began

with lightening of the lamp and garlanding of the sacred bus of Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan

Orientation Programme

Volume 4 Issue 1

IIM Metals & Materials Quiz

On Saturday, August 9th ‟14, Metals and Material quiz was

organised by the Department of Metallurgical Engineering, IIT

(BHU) on behalf of Indian Institute of Metals, Student Affiliated

Chapter of IIM Varanasi. A total of 44 teams from Class XI and XII

representing 22 schools of Varanasi and nearby schools

participated in the quiz. The quiz was organised in two stages:

preliminary written round followed by an oral round. Top 16 teams

were selected on the basis of preliminary round. The quiz master

for oral round was Prof. R. K. Mandal, Head of the Department. The

quiz ended with a tie for the first prize between two teams of

Sunbeam English School, Bhagwanpur, Varanasi. The runner up

team was from Central Hindu Boys School, Varanasi.

School students engaged in the Quiz.

He also honored the special guest of the event, Dr. V. V. Kutumba Rao with the Distinguished

Alumni Award. Dr. V.V. Kutumba Rao shared his valuable experiences and gave his precious words of

wisdom to the newly admitted students. At the end, there was a tour to acquaint the freshers with the

laboratory equipments and facilities in the department.

Malaviya, followed by melodious Kulgeet. The new entrants were

then enlightened with the precious words of wisdom by Dr. Rajiv

Sangal, director, IIT (BHU), followed by an explanation of academic

rules by the Dean, Academic affairs. The students and their parents

were also briefed about the activities of IIT GYMKHANA. First year

incharge, Dr. D Tiwary as well as Dean, Students Affairs, Prof. Ashim

Mukherjee, shared valuable information with the young minds of IIT

(BHU). On the following day, the departmental orientation

programme was held for the students, where the honorable Head of

the department, Prof. R.K. Mandal briefed the students with the

heritage and glories of the department followed by the introduction

of “The Mentor-Mentee Network”.

A section of packed audience during the orientation

programme

The quiz concluded with the prize distribution by the Head

of the Department followed by vote of thanks by Dr. R. Manna,

honorary secretary, IIM Varanasi Chapter. The winning teams shall

be representing the IIM - Varanasi Chapter at IGCAR, Kalpakkam

during the National Prof. Brahm Prakash Memorial Materials Quiz.

At the end of quiz, lunch was arranged for all the participants,

faculty members and quiz organizers. Prize distribution by Head of the department.

Inaugural function of METSOC at LT-1.

Volume 4 Issue 1

The celebrations commenced with the cutting of cake brought by the students for the honourable

lecturers. The students from Part II exhibited their versatility in the fields of theatre and music by giving

marvelous performances, which was then followed by a quiz for the lecturers. Mellifluous songs were sung

by Mr. Ashish Jain (Part-IV) and Ms. Rashi (Part-I) followed by an inspiring speech by emeritus professor

Dr. A.K. Ghose.

Word games were hosted by Mr. Kishan Agrawal and Mr. Kaushik Kumar Mahato (Part-III) and all

the lecturers were presented with mementos. All the students and faculty members enjoyed to the fullest

under the cheerful hosting of Mr. Lovish Tyagi (Part-III).

METSOC Inauguration

The inauguration of activities of Metallurgy Society

(MET-SOC) for the session 2014-2015 was held on Saturday, 23rd

August in N.P. Gandhi Memorial Hall. The function was glorified

with the presence of Dr. K. Muraleedharan, Director (Materials),

DRDO, as the chief guest and was presided over by Prof. G. V. S.

Sastry (Dean of Academic Affairs, IIT-BHU). The function started

with the Kulgeet followed by a welcome address by the honorable

Head Of the Department, Prof. R. K. Mandal. A brief introduction to

METSOC was then provided by Dr. K. K. Singh. Dr. Muraleedharan

shared his valuable experiences at the department and Banaras

Hindu University, with all the students, followed by Prof. G. V. S.

Sastry giving the Presidential remarks. The final vote of thanks was

proposed by Mr. Rohit Agrawal, General Secretary Met-Soc.

Later in the afternoon, Dr. Muraleedharan addressed all the

final year students (Ph.D, M.Tech 1st and 2nd year, IDD final year

& B.tech final year) for the job prospects in DRDO.

Teachers’ Day Celebrations

An entrepreneurial bug bites Meta-Part IV students

"No talk, All Action - Launch a startup in 54 hours.”

Students of Metallurgy Part IV hosted Startup Weekend for the first time in Uttar Pradesh. Startup

Weekend is an international entrepreneurial program initiated by Google. It is a 54 hours continuously

going event where developer, designer, marketer and most importantly any startup enthusiasts come

together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startup. Startup Weekend begins with

open-mic 60-second pitches that result in the formation of small teams around the best, most viable

concepts. Teams spend Saturday and Sunday focus on customer development, validating their ideas and

building prototypes with the help of experienced mentors. On Sunday, teams demo their products through

Faculty Achievements

Prof. T. R. Mankhand lately contributed an invited chapter on "Refining of Low-Grade Molybdenite

Concentrate" in the book "Molybdenum and its Compounds" edited by Viswanathan S. Saji and Sergy I.

Loptain, Published by Nova Science Publisher, New York ; Chapter-21 (2014) pp:417-429. He was also

felicitated by Banaras Hindu University on Teachers‟ day and also received prestigious "Distinguished

Engineer Award" by Institution of Engineers, Varanasi Local Centre on Engineers' Day held on 15th

September 2014.

Prof. Vakil Singh delivered Prof. N.P. Gandhi Memorial lecture in NMD-ATM 2014 held at Pune.

Dr. G. S. Mahobia and Dr. O. P. Sinha attended NMD-ATM 2014 at Pune. Also, Rs. 20 lakhs have been

sanctioned under sprouting grant scheme for the study of hot deformation behaviour of nitrogen

stainless steel. Thereafter, plasma furnace for preparation of nitrogen stainless steel have been once

again started after a span of nearly 25 years.

Recent Achievements

presentation round and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts. In three years of time

Startup Weekend has spread its legs in 720+ cities of 130 countries with more than 120,000

attendees.

Startup Weekend Varanasi which was held from 12th-14th

September was a great success. This event witnessed 93

participants with the highest number of pitches all across India.

The expert panel of this event had names like Vanita Vishwanath,

Pushpinder Singh, Alok Rai, Anupam Raghuvanshi, Durgesh

Nandan, Rituraj Singh, Siddharth Mishra, Pranjal Modi and Aditya

Singh. Under the guidance of these coaches participants took

their idea to the execution stage. Apart from the mentorship for

those 54 hours Startup Weekend Varanasi had several other

partners to accelerate the startups coming out of the event

further. Microsoft Ventures provided BizSpark toolkit, Palaash

Ventures provided working space in Bengaluru, Amazon provided

AWS toolkit, .CO provided free web domain and lot more.

Startup Weekend Varanasi was organized by Amitesh

Mishra, Mudit Kedia, Prabhav Srivastava, Rajesh Barnwal,

Sarvesh Mundra, Vibhav Gupta, Shilpa Roy and Pradhyumn Singh

who believe that entrepreneurship is the single largest driving

force for creating jobs for ourselves, opportunities for our

families, and ultimately, more responsible and thriving societies.

Participants cheering in the senate Hall

Swatantrata Bhawan

Expert panel for Startup Weekend Varanasi

Dr. K.K. Singh received prestigious Er. V.S. Chauhan-Mrs Rajyashree

Chauhan award for presenting the best technical paper in the field of

environmental engineering on 30th November, 2014, at IEI UP state

center, Lucknow. Honorable Lokayukta, Shri N.K. Mehrotra was the

chief guest of the programme and handed over the award and prize

money of Rs. 5000.

Dr. Kausik Chattopadhyay attended and presented a paper on „Effect of Surface Nanostructure on

Tensile and Low Cycle Fatigue Behaviour of Al 2014 Alloy‟, in The 6th International Conference on

Nano-materials by Severe Plastic Deformation, June 30 – July 4, 2014, Metz, France. He also delivered

an invited lecture on „Effect of Ultrasonic shot peening on microstructure and mechanical properties of

316L stainless steel‟ in International Conference on Advanced Materials and Energy Technology‟, 17-19

December, 2014, IIEST Shibpur, Howrah, India.

Prof. N.K. Mukhopadhyay has been awarded IIM-ASM visiting lectureship 2014-15. He recently presented

a couple of invited talks at NMD-ATM 2014 and in national conference on “Crystallography for materials

scientists” at DMRL, Hyderabad and also chaired a session at NMD-ATM 2014, held at Pune. He has also

been elected a member of Commission on Aperiodic Crystals‟ of International Union of crystallography

(IUCr). A couple of lectures namely “Prof. A.K. Seal memorial lecture” instituted by Institution of

Engineers (India) and Key-note lecture in International conference at IIEST, Shibpur, West Bengal were

delivered by Prof. Mukhopadhyay.

Students Achievements

Mr. Dhananjay Pradhan (PhD scholar) recently presented a paper on ''Effect of salt coating on hot

corrosion behaviour of superalloy IN718 at 600°C” at NMD-ATM 2014 (12th - 15th November, 2014)

held in Pune, under supervision of Dr. G. S. Mahobia.

Ms. Priti Verma (PhD scholar) presented a paper on ''Low cycle fatigue behaviour of modified 9Cr-1Mo

steel at room temperature and 300°C” at NMD-ATM 2014 under supervision of Dr. G. S. Mahobia.

Mr. Sarvesh Mundra (IDD Part IV) presented a paper on “Micromechanics Modelling of Deformation of

AHSS Steels” at NMD-ATM 2014.

Mr. Kartik Venkatraman, Mr. Rohit Agrawal, Mr. Amitesh Mishra, Mr. Mudit Kedia and Ms. Sandhya

Susarla students of B.Tech Part: IV were the finalist of the GE Edison Challenge'15 which had the theme

of efficient and innovative method for electricity production. This team of five came up with a novel

method of hydrogen production through solar water splitting. This hydrogen could further be utilized for

electricity production with the help of hydrogen fuel cell.

Volume 4 Issue 1

Dr. K.K.Singh being handed over Er. V.S.

Chauhan-Mrs Rajyashree Chauhan Award.

Alumni Achievements

Prof. S. Lele (distinguished Professor) received IIM honory membership at NMD-ATM

2014 held in Pune.

Prof. K. Chattopadhyay (Alumni, presently at IISc) received IIM honorary membership at

NMD-ATM 2014.

Dr. T.K. Nandy (Alumni, presently at DMRL) received 'Metallurgists of the year - 2014‟ award from

Ministry of Steel, Government of India at NMD-ATM 2014.

Prof. S. Ranganathan (Former Faculty member, presently at IISc) received prestigious

'Life time Achievement' award from Indian National Academy of Engineering (12th -

13th December), in Jaipur.

Dr. Pratyush Tiwary (B.Tech : 2007, IIT-BHU; PhD : 2012, CalTech) recently published

a paper named, "From Metadynamics to Dynamics", in Physical Review Letters

regarding solving the so-called time-scale problem in atomistic simulations. The paper

has been spotlighted in this current issue of Physical Review Letters (PRL).

Dr. Deep Jariwala (Ph.D candidate) recently got a significant breakthrough in the field

of low dimensional nanoelectronic devices. He has published a paper namely,

“Gate-tunable carbon nanotube–MoS2 heterojunction p-n diode", in PNAS. This work is

the first ever demonstration of a p-n hetero-junction in the atomically thin limit. It can

be envisioned as an entirely new class of electronic opening up by virtue of this

discovery.

Published by: Head of Department, Dept. of Metallurgical Engineering, IIT(BHU), Varanasi

Editors: Prof. N. K. Mukhopadhyay (mukho.met@iitbhu.ac.in), Prof. B. N. Sarma (bnsarma.met@iitbhu.ac.in),

Dr. Vikas Jindal (vjindal.met@iitbhu.ac.in)

Student Editors: Mr. Sarvesh Mundra (IDD Part IV), Mr. Rajat Arora (IDD Part III)