Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) is launching the Subra Suresh Distinguished Lecture series that will feature lectures by Nobel Laureates and globally-renowned speakers from various walks of life. According to sources, the speakers will also deliver a science talk, which will be open to all members of the public. It is learnt that Prof Didier Queloz, awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for ‘spectacular discovery that kick-started the rise of exoplanet research,’ will deliver the inaugural address of the Subra Suresh Distinguished Lecture series in Chennai on October 20, an event that would be open to everyone.
The topic of Prof Didier Queloz’s address to the public is ‘Exoplanets and the search for life in the universe.’ Those interested in attending the event have been asked to register through the special link made available for the purpose. The Subra Suresh Distinguished Lecture series was launched in honour of one of its most illustrious alumni of IIT Madras Prof Subra Suresh, a distinguished alumnus awardee (1997), President and a distinguished university professor at the prestigious Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
This new lecture series has been made possible by a generous gift from another illustrious alumnus of IIT Madras Senapathy ‘Kris’ Gopalakrishnan, Chairman of Axilor Ventures, Bengaluru, and co-founder of Infosys. Highlighting the importance of this initiative, Prof Mahesh Panchagnula, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations), IIT Madras, said, “We are delighted to launch the Subra Suresh lecture series supported by the generosity of Kris Gopalakrishnan. This series will bring the best speakers from all over the world to India, with the motivation to bring a broad perspective of science to researchers and laypeople.”
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As part of this three-day annual event, these distinguished speakers will also deliver a separate technical address at IIT Madras and hold discussions with professors and students from various research institutions in Chennai. A one-day workshop will also be organised in honour of the visiting academics as a forum for faculty and students to get together.
Elaborating on the benefits of this series not only to IIT Madras students, but to the wider research community in Chennai, Prof Raghunathan Rengaswamy, Dean (Global Engagement), IIT Madras, said, “This fantastic initiative will allow us to bring world-renowned researchers and intellectuals in several fields to the IIT Madras campus. We hope to invite the larger Chennai community to participate in this lecture series.”
The Subra Suresh Distinguished Lecture Series will be a three-day annual event. Day one will include the technical lecture followed by a public lecture on day two. The final day would focus on interactions between the distinguished speaker and IIT Madras faculty, students and laboratory visits. Prof Subra Suresh is a former Director of the US National Science Foundation, a former Dean of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a former President of Carnegie Mellon University.
He is the first IIT alumnus and India-born academic to be appointed to these leadership positions. Prof Didier Queloz holds a Jacksonian Professorship of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, the UK, and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, the UK as well as of the Royal Society, the UK. He is also a p of Physics at ETH-Z, Switzerland.
