Professor Govindan Rangarajan is appointed as the new director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Friday. He is been put charge of the institute as the Director Prof. Anurag Kumar retires from his service on July 31.
The official statement read, “Prof. Govindan Rangarajan has been formally appointed by the Governing Council of the Institute as the next Director of IISc with effect from August 1, 2020, after obtaining approval from the Visitor, the Honourable President of India.”
The Prof. Rangarajan was indeed happy and proud to take charge as the director of the prestigious institute. He said that “The Institute has a glorious 111-year-old legacy of impactful contributions to science and engineering. I will strive to uphold this tradition and take the Institute to even greater heights in the coming years.”
Prof. Rangarajan has an Integrated M.Sc. (Hons.) degree from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, and a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. He worked at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, USA, and returned to India at 1992. Previously, Prof. Rangarajan was the Chair, Division of Interdisciplinary Research at IISc which possesses 10 departments and centres.
During his six-year-tenure, Prof. Anurag Kumar, is appreciated to have introduced initiatives to modernise IISc’s administration and infrastructure, improve faculty recruitment, increase support from non-government sources, enable the careers of women researchers in the Institute, and enhance IISc’s visibility abroad.
The IISc is one among the few institutions in the country that was picked as an Institution of Eminence (IoE) by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2018.