IIT Gandhinagar Director Professor Sudhir Jain has been conferred with Padma Shri for his distinguished service in the field of Science & Engineering at this year’s Republic Day.
In June 2009, Professor Jain joined IITGN as the founder-director and today he is serving his third term as the director of IITGN.
Professor Jain while commenting on his achievement said: “ it’s a collective recognition of the entire community’s efforts, sacrifices, and hard work.”
Professor Jain has been part of several summits organised by Elets Technomedia including the World Education Summit and eIndia Summit. During his speech at the Elets eIndia Summit 2011 about the need of the hour to improve the education sector of India. He said, “People from around the world should be able to enter our campuses and indulge in exchange for new intellectual ideas.”
Professor Jain is an internationally reputed scholar of earthquake engineering and a passionate academic administrator. He served as President of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering from 2014-18. He was elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering in 2003 and conferred Life Membership by the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) in 2013.
Under Professor Jain’s leadership, IITGN has introduced several innovations in curriculum, student affairs, faculty recruitment, and institutional management to inculcate and promote excellence by faculty and students.
Keeping up its practice of inclusiveness, IIT Gandhinagar, on the day of Republic Day, also organised a Bada Khana – inspired by the tradition of the Indian Army where everyone, ranging from a Jawan to the General, shared a meal together. All members including faculty, staff, their family members, students, construction workers, engineers, architects, consultants, and well-wishers, mustered and enjoyed eating together like one big family.
Other than this initiative, he has also led the development of IITGN’s new campus, which has won several national awards and is the first campus in India to receive the 5-star GRIHA-LD rating.
At a flag hoisting ceremony at IITGN on Republic Day, Professor Jain said: “Eleven years ago, we had a chance to shape IITGN differently from other institutions in this country. We have to give IITGN a constitution, not necessarily in writing, but verbally or in practice, to think internally how we want to live, manage our relationships at various levels, and maintain our ethos. We have to speed up, make greater improvements to make IITGN an example for other educational institutions in the country and thereby contribute to nation-building.”
Professor Jain holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Roorkee, and Masters and Doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
He has made major contributions to earthquake engineering practice and education in India. He was instrumental in the development of several important seismic codes in India and has trained thousands of professional engineers and college teachers in earthquake engineering through his continuing education programs. He established the National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE) at IITK and developed the National Programme on Earthquake Engineering Education (NPEEE), supported by the Government of India.
He has also initiated a challenge for BTech sophomores. The challenge is to participate in the “ () ”. This event aims towards motivating students to instill leadership, foster teamwork, and develop inter & interpersonal skills with enthusiastic participation in academic, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities.
A number of interesting events are lined-up for GC, including; Coding Test, Mock Interviews, Improvement in SPI, GK Quiz, Typing Speed Game, and a few others – each given different weightage. For this, the 2018 batch is grouped into a total of nine teams, each having around 20 to 21 participants, who then would be judged on the basis of their group participation and/or performance. Interestingly, these teams are named after the nine planets of the solar system (including pluto).
Professor Jain has served as a consultant for several major projects, such as bridges, petrochemical pipelines, and concrete dams and has published more than 150 scholarly papers. His research interests include the study of damaging earthquakes, reinforced concrete buildings, bridges, and seismic codes.
