News Magazine -2009 - Chemical Engineering Department - IISc

with Sanjeev's address. He likened the department to a mother whoraises her youngest ones with all the care and ignores the olderones, but decides to call them after many years, and they all comerunning, which is an indication of the bond that exists between thedepartment and its alumni. Prof. Prabhu (the present Chairman of thedepartment) next welcomed all the alumni. He cited the comingtogether of Swami Vivekananda and JN Tata, two men with disparateinterests, as the genesis of IISc. Prof. Prabhu hoped that ouralumni with very disparate interests would also come together forthe common cause of taking and guiding the department to newerheights.These opening addresses were followed by session on `Learning fromPast, Present, and outlook for Future'. This session had talks fromProf. M. Ravindram on development of infrastructure in thedepartment, Prof. M. S. Murthy on evolution of research areas, Prof.Govindrao on role played by the department at national and statelevel and the legacy of Prof. N. R. Kuloor, Dr. Lakshmanan onstudent-faculty relations, Prof. G. M. Shahshidhara on life outsidethe department, Prof. S. S. Lokras on industrial and societalinteraction of department, and finally Prof. K. S. Gandhi on rapidlychanging teaching and research environment and the department'sability to respond to it. Prof. R. Kumar, who was away in Franceduring the Meet, was missed by most of the participants. Thesetalks not only covered the above specific issues, but they alsobrought back for many alumni the old memories of the institute, theresearch culture in the department and the unique student-facultyrelationship that existed during a certain period.The next session on Student Learning was organized by Dr. Manjunath(GE). It had six talks (Dr. Rajganesh, IITK; Dr. Siva Kumar, GE;Dr. Manjunath, GE; S. Suresh; Preeta Datta, ME student;Dr. C. Ramakanth). The talks covered various aspects of learning:courses, research training, and soft skills. One outstandingmessage of this session was that the department alumni are widelyknown for their very strong analytical abilities and technicalcompetence, and the need to strengthen soft-skills, for example, theability to convince team leader or team members of the usefulness of21