Dear Alumnus/ Alumna, 

Sorry for not posting my “weekly message” last week, but I was in the UAE, busy meeting alumni, visiting Universities, and raising funds. I got to know that Dubai and Abu Dhabi are quite far apart, and so are alumni living in the 2 cities, metaphorically! A breakfast meeting in Dubai drew > 20 alumni, and a dinner in Abu Dhabi drew > 30. There is great excitement among UAE alumni in forming a local Group, and organizing networking Events on a regular basis. Our Office will, of course, be delighted to facilitate, along with the IIT Madras Alumni Association (IITMAA).

The big news making the rounds is that IITM is # 6 among suppliers to CS faculty to Top-50 Universities in the U.S.( http://cs.brown.edu/people/alexpap/faculty_dataset.html). We plan to collect similar data for other disciplines, both to affirm our high quality, and to identify alumni-faculty who can nucleate research collaborations with IITM counterparts.

Our Office has just released the “2013 Annual Giving Report”. Here’s a link to the e-version: http://acr.iitm.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/quaterly_newsletter.swf

Do drop us a line if you’d like a hardcopy. If you’d like to give back, visithttp://gjfund.iitm.ac.in, unless you live in USA, in which case you should access http://www.iitmaana.org.

Also released recently, our “Quarterly e-Magazine”, with the inaugural issue featuring the IITM Satellite Project: http://acr.iitm.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IIT_AGR_2013.swf

The IITM Satellite project aims to put a satellite into a low-Earth orbit to study charge particle bursts in the region just below the ionosphere. An important milestone was crossed this March when the designs and prototypes were presented to ISRO, and were found acceptable. Profs. David Koilpillai and HarishankarRamachandran have been leading an enthusiastic team of students in this highly-interdisciplinary effort.

On Monday, our Distinguished Alumnus and Vice Chairman, Tata Steel, Mr. B. Muthuramandelivered the second lecture in the Prof. EG Ramachandran Distinguished Lecture series started last year. His talk on “Institutional Transformation” was very timely as IITM gets set to launch its “Strategic Plan 2020”.

From Monday-Wednesday, May 12-14, 2014, an “Institute Review” will take place. I will report on it in my next message….