Endowments

As you are aware, late Prof. P.K. Aravindan was an outstanding teacher of civil engineering at IIT Madras. He has inspired generations of students as well as research scholars, teaching a variety of courses both at undergraduate and post-graduate level. He has been consistently rated as one of the best teachers in the Institute. All of us cherish him as an admirable person to work with, as one who mentors younger colleagues, and also as one who motivates students to maintain the highest professional standards. He was also a very competent Structural Designer. He has made significant contributions to a host of industries, in both private and Government sectors, in terms of structural design of a variety of buildings, bridges and port structures, through innovations in design and retrofit of old or damaged structures. He had served the Institute by handling efficiently additional responsibilities as Chairman, Engineering Unit, Advisor of weaker section and foreign students. He had also contributed by designing numerous buildings inside IIT Madras, adopting innovative structural forms.

The Department of Civil Engineering proposes to create a Chair Professorship in the name of Prof. P.K. Aravindan, as an expression of our gratitude to a great teacher who actively contributed to the development of Department of Civil Engineering and IIT Madras in its formative years, and to honour his significant contributions to structural engineering practice in India. The Chair Professorship will enable the Department to identify and nominate academically high performing faculty of Civil Engineering. The target corpus aspired for making this Chair as a perpetually sustaining one is around Rs. 1 crore. We have already received generous pledges from former colleagues of Prof. PKA to the tune of Rs. 30 lakhs. We now invite Alumni of Civil Engineering Department of IIT Madras to contribute towards this initiative.

All donations to IIT M in India and the USA are eligible for 100 % tax benefit.