Rourkela: Prof Karanam Uma Maheshwar Rao took charge as director of NIT-Rourkela on Friday.
He was appointed to the post by the Education Ministry on January 25. Prior to this, he had served as the Director of NIT Surathkal from July 21, 2017, to February 17, 2022.
After taking over as director of the premier national level institutions for technical education in the Steel City, Rao is expected to have a meeting with the incumbent director, internal board members, deans, chief warden, COVID committee members and registrar.
His itinerary also includes a meeting with executive members of NTESA, NITR. He will also chair the FC and Board of Governors (BOG) meetings of the institute.
Notably, this post had been lying vacant after the five-year tenure of Prof Animesh Biswas ended in October last year. Since then, Prof Simanchal Panigrahi was acting as in-charge Director and in-charge BOG chairman with limited power.
THE NEW DIRECTOR
After graduating in Mining Engineering from Osmania University, Hyderabad, in 1983, Rao worked in mining industries for around three years. He then joined the Indian Institute of Technology Banaras Hindu University (IT-BHU) and acquired M-Tech in Mining Engineering in 1987. He was the topper of his class.
Rao started his teaching career with the then Regional Engineering College, Surathkal, DK, Karnataka during 1987-89 as a lecturer. In 1989, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in the Department of Mining Engineering. He did his PhD in the field of Rock Mechanics from the institute.
He served IIT Kharagpur in various administrative positions and was the head of the Mining Engineering Department during 2006-08 and 2010-14.
Rao’s field of specialisation is experimental rock mechanics and he has been working in this area since 1989. The milestone in his research is a book on the Principles of Rock Drilling, published by A.A.Balkema, Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1999. Later this book was also published by India Book House, New Delhi.
In 2015, he was appointed as a visiting professor to the University of British Columbia (UBC), Okanagon campus, by the school of Mechanical engineering.
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