First Lady Deputy Director For The First IIT Of The Country

Prof Banerjee has created a historical breakthrough by being the first woman to take over the charge of a Deputy Director of the first IIT of the country and the world.

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BY A STAFF REPORTER: Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur welcomes Prof. Rintu Banerjee as the new Deputy Director of IIT Kharagpur. Prof Banerjee has created a historical breakthrough by being the first woman to take over the charge of a Deputy Director of the first IIT of the country and the world.

Prof. Banerjee is the Founder Head and is presently the Chairperson of P K Sinha Centre for Bioenergy and Renewables. She has also served as the Head of the Centre for Rural Development, Innovative and Sustainable Technology and Head of the Department of Agricultural & Food Engineering at IIT Kharagpur for 3 years. In her career span, she has held many important portfolios including Chairperson of Centre of Excellence in Precision Agriculture & Food Nutrition; Nodal Coordinator for Australia and New Zealand for SPARC & Coordinator for RuTAG.

Prof. Banerjee has completed her PhD in Microbial Biotechnology from Chemical Engineering Department at IIT Kharagpur. From the beginning of her career she was engaged in industry-academy collaborative research activities. As an outcome of her research, she has transferred several technologies to different industries and have many national/international patents to her credit. Recently, she has successfully transferred her 1G & 2G Ethanol technology to the industry for commercialization.

She has published two books in the area of environmental biotechnology and OMICS Based Approaches in Plant Biotechnology. Besides that she has handled several government/private/industry sponsored projects that includes TBT, DST, ICAR, UAI, ICMR, IMPRINT, SPARC, SERB and many other multinational industries. She has visited several countries as a Visiting Professor and for various scientific collaborations that includes Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Egypt, Australia, US, Taiwan, Japan, UK, South Korea, Laos, Thailand, Dubai, Doha, Brazil, Canada, Malaysia to name a few.

Prof. Banerjee was conferred the Panjabrao Deshmukh Award for Outstanding Women Scientist from ICAR; Best Woman Bioscientist form Biotech Research Society of India; Young Scientist Award’ 94 from the Association for Food Scientists and Technologists (India); Dr. Prem Dureja Endowment; Institute Chair Professor from IIT Kharagpur; Louis Pasteur Award; Madan Mohan Malviya Award and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award. She has also received the Most Inspiring Women Engineer/Scientist for the year 2014, for the exemplary work in the field of Science & Technology by Engineering Watch, New Delhi and has more than 12000+ citations under her name.

Speaking on being the first lady Deputy Director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Rintu Banerjee remarked, “It is my utmost privilege and honour to be the Deputy Director of IIT Kharagpur. Previously as the Dean of Research & Development, I wanted to develop opportunities of innovation and sustainable inventions with affordable technology. As the Deputy Director of the largest IIT of the country, my intent is to fastrack the economic progress of the country through innovative solutions provided by IIT Kharagpur along with uplifting the Institute’s ranking both on national and international levels. With industry 4.0 and digitronics making inroads using smart technology for ongoing automation of traditional industrial practices, the institution should boost its performance indicators to suit best in industry collaborations and indulges to develop strong policy mission programme with the government that sensitize people to ‘Make in India & Make for the World’.

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