Jamshedpur: The inauguration of the 4th edition of �Behind the Teacher’s Desk (BTTD-201)�, a two day students’ seminar on Metallurgical Engineering was held today at CSIR-NML Auditorium.
The two day deliberation attracted more than 220 metallurgical engineering students from 23 reputed engineering colleges across India. The institute represented were IIT Kaharagpur; IIT Bombay; IIT Varanasi; IISc Bangalore ; INDUS University, Ahmedabad; Jadavpur University, Kolkata; CSIR-CECRI, Karaikudi; GEC, Gandhinagar; MNIT Jaipur; NIFFT, Ranchi; NIT Durgapur; NIT Jamshedpur; NIT Rourkela; NIT Warangal; VNIT Nagpur; AcSIR-NML; RGUKT, Kadappa; PSG Tech Coimbatore; OP Jindal Institute of Technology, Raigarh; GCECT Kolkata; IITE Ahmedabd, GIET Gunpur; Institute of Engineers, Kolkata and NIT Trichy.
The seminar is a result of collaboration of Indian Institute of Metals (IIM) Jamshedpur Chapter, Tata Steel and CSIR-NML to encourage budding metallurgists and giving them professional exposure of industry as well as research and development in the areas of minerals, metals & metallurgy. To mark the occasion a Souvenir on BTTD-2014 was also released.
Dr. Sandip Bhattacharya, Chairman IIM, Jamshedpur Chapter & Chairman BTTD-2014 in his welcome address mentioned about the overwhelming response that has been received this year with more number of student participants as compared to the past three years. He said “The field of metallurgy requires no special introduction.
This is a field where tremendous amount of research has been carried out and applications do not find an end. But that is not the end. Still lot of questions are yet to be answered. So it is now up to you, the young generation of professional metallurgists to come up with the solutions and new ideas and contribute to the field of metallurgy.
Platforms like BTTD are the places where you will find opportunities to showcase your talent. Like every year, I am sure this year too we will have a number of interesting and thought provoking seminars”.
BTTD Convenor Dr. K.L. Sahoo said that this seminar is an unique initiative by IIM, Jamshedpur. It provides a platform to the students to learn in the open environment, interact with the scientists, engineers and industry professionals and gain through the industrial exposure.
Dr. Sahoo added more than 110 papers will be presented(both oral and poster) by the students during the technical sessions to be held on Raw materials & metal extraction, Metal processing and characterization, Advanced materials & emergent technology, Materials modeling & simulation of metallurgical processes, Resource, energy & recycling, Materials knowledge management and Technology entrepreneurship. Industrial visits and a quiz on metallurgy will also be organised.
Chief Guest to the ocassion Dr. S. Srikanth, Director, CSIR-NML while addressing participating students said,” The idea of having this event is to provide space, time and an opportunity for all of you to showcase the innovation, creativity, wit, humour and sense of adventure in all of you. I will take the example of our own profession namely engineering.
Why is it that we have not produced a Michael Faraday or a Thomas Alva Edison or a Nicolai Tesla or a Wright Brothers in the last one century? Why is it that we despite producing about 1.5 million engineers every year, do not have a world renowned engineering company such as General Electric or Boeing or IBM or Sony or MMM or Siemens? ” He added, “Albert Einstein was only a matriculate and from a patent clerk went on to become the world�s greatest scientist.
Srinivasa Ramanujam went on to become one of the world�s leading mathematicians and the first Indian to be elected to the Royal Society and Trinity College from being a clerk in Madras Port Trust. Roosevelt sick and paralysed in both legs went to become the President of USA. Homer who was blind went on to be the greatest Greek writer.
Helen Keller was blind, deaf and dumb. Beethoven was deaf. There are many Indian examples as well: Abdul Kalaam, Dhirubai Ambani, Lal Bahadur Shastry, Sachdev Kunwer and hundreds of others who just did not give up”. According to him it is the people in the industry who make the difference. Their thoughts, ideas, creativity is what that matters. He said, “we should look at our local strength and work upon to build that strength from better to best”.
Prof. Claire Davis from the School of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham, UK delivered the Plenary talk on Steel research at the University of Birmingham-link between microstructure and properties.
She said, “Customers demand steels with higher strength and better toughness to allow improved performance and/or light weighting components. In order to achieve steels with improved mechanical properties it is important to understand how the steel chemistry and processing conditions control the microstructure developed as this has a large influence on the resulting properties”.
A vote of thanks was proposed by Sri Tanmay Bhattacharya, Secretary, IIM, Jamshedpur chapter.