India Ministry of Mines to get 'chair professor in Aluminium' for VNIT

The Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering (MME) at Visvesvarya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) announced last week that it intends to get a 'chair professor in Aluminium' soon. The chair, to be set up by the ministry of mines (MoM) through the city based Jawaharlal Nehru Aluminium Development and Design Centre (JNARDDC), will start functioning from the next academic year onward.

According to reliable sources, IIT Bhubaneshwar is also planning to get a similar chair for its own metallurgy department.

It is a norm in the academia to select the chair professor on the basis of his contribution in the particular subject and field. The 'chair professor in Aluminium' should be one who will be able to guide and motivate budding metallurgists in the institute towards adopting a career in aluminium.

Commenting on the association JNARDDC director Anupam Agnihotri said, "This had become possible due to the joint effort of JNARDDC and VNIT under an ongoing project and MoU of working together in aluminium research from past two years. There are many public sector companies in aluminium and offer enough opportunities for research.”

{googleAdsense}

"Metallurgy generally focuses only 'steel' where as there are lot of non- ferrous metallurgy too and aluminium is one such sector which needs to be studied in depth for overall improvement of this metal and its per capita consumption in the country," said Agnihotri.

The chair in aluminium is aimed at paving way for enhanced R & D in aluminium, both as a metal as well as a sector.