Sri B. Muthuraman, Vice President (Project, Gopalpur) has contributed to the Iron and Steel industry in a major way.
He studied Metallurgy at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and joined the Tata Iron and Steel Co. Ltd in 1966. He had a successful stint in the plant and was closely associated with Tata Steel’s three million tonne expansion programme. He had a long and illustrious association with their Marketing and Sales Division which culminated in his reaching the highest position of Vice President (Marketing and Sales) in 1993-94.
In 1995, Mr. Muthuraman was given charge of planning for Tata’s prestigious new mega steel plant at Gopalpur, as the Vice President (Project, Gopalpur). This has been one of his most challenging assignments with Tata Steel.
Mr. Muthuraman’s contributions in the last three decades have been exemplary in terms of the leadership which he has provided not only in creating new markets but also in strategic and operational initiatives which he has taken to enhance the values provided to the customers. He has kept abreast of technological developments in iron and steel and has used his intimate knowledge in this area to the steel production in India.
He has also participated in the world’s top most steel forums. He was the President of the Alloy Steel Producers Association a couple of years ago and has recently become the Chairman of CII-Eastern Region, Orissa State Committee.
Mr. Ram V. Tyagarajan has made considerable contributions to the growth of Indian Industries and in particular to the Sugar Industry. He is the current Chairman and Managing Director of Thiru Arooran Sugars Limited, Madras, India.
He graduated from this Institute in 1972 in Chemical Engineering and obtained a Master’s degree from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US in 1974. He has managerial experience of over twenty years, including a long stint (1974-82) with Strategic Planning Associates, a reputed management consulting firm in the US, where he was a Senior Vice President before returning to India.
Mr. Tyagarajan has served as President of the Indian Sugar Mills Association for two consecutive terms, from 1987 to 1989. He has also been the President of the Sugar Technologists’ Association of India from 1991 to 1993. Currently, he is on the Board of Directors of a number of reputed companies and is actively involved in various industrial associations.
Mr. Tyagarajan was a member of the High Power Committee on Sales Tax Reforms set up recently by the Government of Tamilnadu. He is also chairing the working group of the Sugar Industry constituted by the Govt. of Tamilnadu to formulate development plans for the Ninth Plan period. Recently he has been nominated to the Board of Governors of the School of Energy, Bharathidasan University.
Dr Jalaiah Unnam’s contributions to metal-matrix composites, and X-ray diffraction have won him several awards from NASA Langley Research and Development Park in Hampton, Virginia, USA, and other organizations.
Dr Unnam graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras with a Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgy (1970), and earned the Master’s and the Ph.D. degrees in Materials Engineering and Science from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia.
Dr Unnam is the President and CEO of Analytical Services & Materials, Inc (AS&M), located in the Langley Research and Development Park in Hampton, Virginia. This Company is a big asset to Langley Research Centre and employs 165 Scientists and Engineers. This company has given critical help to the Langley Research Centre in R&D areas like the redesign and analysis of the wind Tunnel fan blades, the Shuttle solid rocket booster, the National Aerospace Plane Program engine and airframe concept reviews and the laminar flow control Supercritical Airfoil Experiments.
In 1989 NASA gave him an award “in recognition of his outstanding performance, entrepreneurial spirit, and unique commitment in providing support to the National Aeronautical and Space Administration”.
Professor Subra Suresh has made outstanding contributions to the study of mechanical behaviour of materials.
Prof Suresh is R.P. Simmons Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the Co-Director of the MIT-Harvard program on Modelling of Materials.
He received the degree of Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1977, in Mechanical Engineering, M.S. from Iowa State University in 1979, and Sc.D from M.I.T. in 1981.
He is the current Chair of the Executive Committee, Materials Division ASME. He is also the Principal Editor of the journals Acta/Scripta Materialia, an Associate Editor of Materials Science and Engineering A, and a Series Editor for the Cambridge University Press State Science Series.
Dr Suresh has won a number of awards that include “The Presidential Young Investigator Award” from NSF in 1985 for outstanding contributions to the understanding of fatigue and fatigue crack growth. Recently he has been invited to one of the six Swedish National Chairs in Engineering by the National Science Foundation for the period 1996-98.
Dr Suresh has been interested in quantitative investigations of the microscopic and macroscopic aspects of mechanical behaviour of metals, ceramics, thin films, piezoelectric materials and composites. He is the author/coauthor of 150 articles in journals and conference proceedings, and is the co-editor of five books. He is a co-inventor in five US and International patent applications, several of which have been licensed by a major international corporation for commercial development. He has written a book entitled Fatigue of Materials which was printed by Cambridge University Press and translated into Chinese.