IITB-Monash Academy 2022 Student events

The IITB-Monash Academy has been abuzz with student events after a hiatus of three years

Poster competition

The IITB-Monash team conducted a poster competition on Thursday, 18 August with both junior and senior students participating. The posters were assessed by a jury composed of Ms. Michelle Lopez (Director, Monash Graduate Research Office), Prof. Swati Patankar (Faculty, IIT Bombay), Prof. Shivasubramanian Gopalakrishnan (Faculty, IIT Bombay) and Mr. Kamalakannan M (Associate Director, Emerson [an industrial machinery manufacturing company and IITB-Monash industry partner]). Students competed for Best poster in two separate categories - students less than two years into their PhD and students more than two years into their PhD. The winners were announced at the Annual awards ceremony ‘Oskar night’ which was held on Sunday, 21 August. See more details below.

60th Convocation ceremony

The 60th Convocation ceremony of IIT Bombay was held on Saturday, 20 August. Prof. Margaret Gardner (President and Vice-Chancellor) led the Monash delegation with Prof. Susan Elliott (Provost and Senior Vice-President), Prof. Sharon Ricardo (Academic Director, Graduate Research), Prof. Jeffrey Walker (Head of the Civil Engineering Department), Ms. Michelle Lopez (Director, Graduate Research Office), Mr. M.S Unnikrishnan (CEO, IITB-Monash Research Academy) and Mr. Adrian Gertler (Senior Program Manager, India Operations, Office of Global Engagement) in attendance.

25 IITB-Monash students graduated as part of the broader IITB convocation ceremony and      received their jointly badged degrees on the day, with Monash’s Vice-Chancellor conferring the degrees on the students. Congratulations to our IITB-Monash graduates! The graduates are:

Awards, including Oskar statuettes, were presented to students in various categories and the winners were:

• Best Three Minute Talk award (First Prize)- Poornima V.B
• Best Three Minute Talk award (Second Prize)- Smriti Mukherjee
• Best Three Minute Talk award (Third Prize)- Sujata Walunj
• Best Poster award for junior researchers- Jaydeep Das
• Best Poster award for senior researchers- Pallavi Goswami
• Best Journal Paper award- Sourabh Mehta
• Best Conference Paper award- Renuka Sharma and Aswin Paul
• Best Thesis award- Akanksha Adaval

Pallavi Goswami won best poster for senior researchers for her work on understanding the evolving behaviour of droughts, which are becoming more unpredictable as the climate changes. Pallavi’s work is a valuable addition in helping to predict droughts and the changes in them.

Jaydeep Das won best poster for junior researchers for his work on T cells, which are responsible for preventing cancerous development in a person’s body. T cell-based therapy involves the modification of T cells from a patient’s body to generate a relatively higher number of functional T cells for reintroduction into the patient. However, T cells start to die outside of their natural environment. Jaydeep’s winning work has been toward developing a platform to support the growth and proliferation of functional T cells for pre-clinical and clinical applications.

Esteemed guests from both India and Australia attended the event, including academic, industry and government representatives - Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri (Director, IIT Bombay), Prof. Sharon Ricardo (Academic Director, Graduate Research, Monash University), Mr. Peter Truswell (Australian Consul-General, Mumbai), Mr. M.S Unnikrishnan (CEO, The Academy), Dr. Santanu Dasgupta (Senior Vice-President, Reliance Industries Ltd), and Mr. Sunil Chari (Managing Director and Co-founder, Rossari Biotech Ltd).