Chair to promote excellence and leadership in teaching and research and development in the field of cyber security
IIT Delhi alumnus Suresh M. Shivdasani, a 1975 class (B.Tech, Electrical), awarded the ‘Shri GK Chandiramani Chair for Cyber Security’ at IIT Delhi in honor of his uncle GK Chandiramani. Chair will promote excellence and leadership in teaching and research and development in the field of cyber security.
The contribution of IIT and IIT alumni is quite unique in India and the world. However, we rarely think of people who have made it possible, e.g. The pioneers of higher education in India who have envisioned, collaborated and collaborated with leading global institutions.
One such pioneer was Shri GK Chandiramani who was the Secretary of the Ministry of Education. GKC, as he was affectionately known, devoted his entire life to the advancement of higher education in India. As Joint Secretary of the Ministry in 1961, he led a team of collaborators between several leading US universities, including IIT Kanpur and MIT. He was personally involved in the negotiations and signed agreements with Russia for the cooperation of IIT Bombay and IIT Madras with Germany. He was associated with the IIT Council for more than three decades and was a founding member of the board of IIM Ahmedabad.
After retiring from the ministry, he was the longest serving chairman of The Council of the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore from 1973-1986, and was succeeded by the well-known Indian physicist Raja Ramanna. He was the Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT Delhi from 1982 to 1985.
Since the company’s inception in 2001, Mr. Suresh Shivdasani has been the Managing Director and CEO of Sohar International Urea and Chemical Industries (SIUCI), which, when created, was the largest private-sector greenfield fertilizer project in the world. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Oman for nine years and has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Tata Opportunity Fund of Singapore since 2012.
He was the CEO of several companies, including Birla International, part of the Bahwan Group in the Middle East and part of the Aditya Birla Group in India. After her B.Tech, Shivdasani received the JN Tata Scholarship for her MBA at McMaster University in Canada, where she became the first non-Canadian to be awarded the Matthew Litvac Gold Medal and the Xerox of Canada Fellowship. Shivdasani then joined the prestigious Tata Administrative Service and at the age of 28 was one of the youngest senior managers of Telco (now Tata Motors).
Sharing his experience as a student at IIT Delhi, Shivdasani, who was also the General Secretary of the Student Affairs Council (SAC), the highest student body of the institute from 1974-75, recalled, “I believe the institute does not just offer an excellent one. The academic environment, however, with the range of extra-curricular activities offered, provides an outstanding opportunity for personal growth, for students to work in teams and to develop leadership qualities. ”
To conduct basic and applied research in Cyber Systems and Information Assurance, IIT Delhi established a Center of Excellence (CoE-CSIA) in Cyber Systems and Information Assurance in 2014. The aim of the center is to train professionals from India and the region through degrees. Degrees, and public education programs, and collaborating with industry, government, and academia on both information security and cyber security theory and practice.