Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2009, 48, 9355–9356
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Festschrift in Honor of Dr. B. D. Kulkarni Bhaskar Dattatrey Kulkarnisor B.D., the affectionate moniker bestowed upon him by his friends and colleaguessis not only one of India’s most accomplished and highly respected chemical engineers, but he is also one of the most unassuming, cheerful, and addictively energetic individuals we have had the pleasure of knowing. He is also one of the most dignified and upright individuals we know, and his strong aversion to departmental and institutional politics should serve as examples to young academicians all over the country. One can only imagine the consequences had his disapproval of the mollycoddling the powers that be not been as intense. Perhaps one of the many CSIR laboratories that he would have most definitely shepherded could have been counted as one of the world’s elite. One can only imagine. Instead, B.D. focused his energies on addressing real problems in science and engineering, and his dislike for petty politics would eventually be quite remarkably dwarfed by his many achievements and accolades. In many ways, terming him a chemical engineer is a severe injustice to the many talents of the man. He is a veritable polymath and the spectrum of problems he has handled is simply astoundings Vedic mathematics to control theory to reaction engineering, biotechnology to polymer physics to artificial neural networks (ANNs). It is our great pleasure to present this special issue on the occasion of his 60th birthday and we thank the several eminent academicians and practitioners who have contributed to it. The statute of the institutes that these individuals represent is a reflection of B.D.’s professional standing. Born on June 5, 1949 in Nagpur, Central India, B.D. completed his matriculation at New English High Schoolsa school founded by one of the disciples of the famous thinker, philosopher, and leader of the Swadeshi movement in British India. He cleared the state-level examination in 1964 with firstclass distinction before enrolling at the Hislop College for his pre-university and interscience courses. Subsequently, he was admitted to the University of Nagpur’s eminent Laxminarayan Institute of Technology, where he received his baccalaureate and Master’s degrees in chemical engineering in 1970 and 1972, respectively. In 1973, he then joined the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, to pursue his doctoral degree in chemical engineering, where he was supervised by the great L. K. Doraiswamy (L.K.D.). Joining L.K.D.’s group was a turning
point in B.D.’s professional life, and, as he fondly states, it gave him an opportunity to span the width, breadth, and depth of chemical engineering science under the watchful eye of a great master and practitioner of chemical engineering. Of course, as L.K.D. himself testified, there were times when it was unclear who derived from benefit from the other. Such praise from one’s teacher surpasses any laurel that one can receive and speaks volumes of B.D.’s ingenuity, resourcefulness, and effort as well as L.K.D.’s humility. Later, B.D. would be lured by Professor M. M. Sharma of the erstwhile UDCT, Mumbai (now Institute of Chemical Technology) to join the University of Mumbai as a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering in the late 1970s, but L.K.D. persuaded B.D. to remain in NCL and develop his own research. The rest, as is presented in the following paragraphs, is history! The problems that B.D. has handled over the years have embraced all levelssmacroscopic, mesoscopic, and microscopicsas well as artificial intelligence (AI)-based evolutionary formalisms. Some of these models have broken new ground and have led to considerably improved fundamental understanding of the reacting/reactor systems. More specifically, his application of nonlinear systems dynamics theory to reactor/ reacting systems has revealed several insights on bifurcation and stability characteristics, leading to novel design and control strategies, even for chaotic systems. The results of his work have also led to better advanced manufacturing technologies, in terms of online process identification, monitoring, modeling and optimization, fault diagnostics, scheduling, and control. These salient, fundamental contributions are summarized in the form of 3 books, 4 edited books, and over 270 peer-reviewed and invited papers. B.D. has also applied the results of his research to practice and has been a highly sought consultant to many Indian and overseas companies. His insistence on the use of the notion of self-similarity of fractals as a basis for design of mobile flexible modular plants for certain consumer products is just one example of the scope of his consulting activities. In addition, the wavelet-based technique of signal separation, data compression, and generation of reduced model descriptions has also found practical use in industry. The AI-based global optimization strategies have also led to improved performance. Some of the novel concepts introduced by him include:
10.1021/ie901367r CCC: $40.75 2009 American Chemical Society Published on Web 10/28/2009
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• A new rate law model called “Encillator”, which is a model reaction system involving exponential autocatalysis to explain variety of reaction behavior; • An arithmetic-analytical approach to solutions of model equations, which is a novel approach that combines the elegance of analytical solutions and rigor of digital computations; • Rigorous fluidized-bed reactor model using initial value formalism; • Multiplicity, instability, and bifurcation behavior of chemical reactions and reactors using normal form theory; • Optimization and control of unknown systems (ANNs and evolutionary algorithms); • New techniques of model building from measured data, including surrogate analysis, phase space reconstruction, wavelets, proper orthogonal decomposition, and stochastic estimation; • Soft sensors developed using AI tools are commercially exploited by large polymer industries; • Cleaning and separation of measured signal without any a priori information (two U.S. patents outright sold to U.S. companies). • Formulation of exact or near-exact functional form from measured data; and • Microemulsions (synthesis of nanoparticles, electrochemical reactions, organic biotransformation, etc., as well as several Indian and U.S. patents and publications). His long list of honors commence with the Young Scientist Medal of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA); he was the first chemical engineer to receive this prestigious award. He has also been decorated with the Amar Dye Chem Award of Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE) (1981), Fellowship of the Maharashtra Academy of Sciences (1988), Fellowship of Indian Academy of Sciences (1988), the Herdillia Award for Excellence in Basic Resarch in Chemical Engineering (1988), the UDCT Golden Jubilee Visiting Fellow (1989), Fellowship of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) (1989), the CSIR’s Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science & Technology (1989), Fellowship of INSA (1990), Best Scientist of the Year, NCL Research Foundation (1992), ChemTech-CEW Award “Outstanding Contributor”, ChemTech Foundation (2000), the Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce & Industry Award (2000), Fellowship of the Academy of the Developing World, Trieste, Italy (2002), and last but definitely not least, the J.C. Bose National Fellow, Department of Science and Technology, India (2008). B.D. has supervised nearly 50 students for their Ph.D. thesis studies, and he has trained well over 200 graduate and undergraduate students in the sought-after areas of mathematical modeling. Moreover, with the able help of his colleagues at NCL, he nurtured and looked after remnants of L.K.D.’s group after retirement of the latter from NCL in 1989. He has written over 300 papers in high-impact-factor journals, holds several patents, and has membership in prestigious committees. One of the most outstanding features of B.D.’s research group has been its training of undergraduate students of chemical engineering from all IITs, universities, NITs and other colleges, during their summer vacations. Approximately 200 of his papers have been co-authored by these young minds. We believe this record is unparalleled in India, and B.D.’s group in the East is unique in its practice of all forms of mathematical modeling under a single roof. It is unsurprising that he is often referred to as the Rutherford Aris of the East. B.D. might not agree with such a parallelism and perhaps will give a broad smile in his usual style; such is his humility and simplicity!
Ganapati D. Yadav Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India
V. K. Jayaraman National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India
V. Ravikumar National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India IE901367R
