Dr. Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar
Award Year: 1994 | Degree Year: 1972
Dr. Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar was born on October 11, 1946, at Muramba, Maharashtra. He received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Electrical Engineering Department from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 1972. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Nagpur University in 1965 and Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from M.S. University, Baroda in 1968.
He has pioneered the national initiative in parallel supercomputing and was instrumental in developing PARAM. He is now leading a mission to build the tera-flop architecture of massively parallel supercomputers. His contributions rank amongst those rare achievements whereby indigenous efforts have helped to build state-of-art technologies of extreme national importance, which has an impact on both the engineering and social planes in India. His dedication to building C-DAC to its current level of self-reliance is noteworthy. His contributions to this national endeavor have been widely acknowledged not only by co-professionals but also by the print and visual media. He has significantly contributed to the electronic analog control system and absorption and up-gradation of the control Bailey Technology of France and also played an active part in the evolution into Digital Distributed Control System.
He held the position of an Advisor in the Department of Electronics, Government of India from 1987 to 1989. During this period he was the national Project Director of four UNDP assisted projects. Prior to this, he was Vice-President of the Tata Consultancy Services, Director of the Electronics Research and Development Centre, Trivandrum and Executive Director, KELTRON. He is a member of the State Electronics Development Commission of the State of Kerala.
During the distinguished career as a technologist, Dr. Bhatkar has authored over 70 research publications in parallel computing, artificial intelligence, distributed computer control, and optimal control theory.
He is on the Editorial Committee of Parallel Processing Letters, Member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP) and Project Coordinator, Indo-Russian ILTP Programme on Parallel Modelling and Visualization. He is the recipient of several national awards, prominent amongst them being ‘Electronics Man of the Year 1992’ Award by Electronics Component Industries Association (ELCINA), the 4Ramlal Wadhwa Gold Medal Award 1992′ by the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE), National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) Merit Certificate Award (1984-85), Electronics Component Industries Association Award to ER&DC for the best research and development contribution in electronics (1983-84), FICCI Award for excellence in Research and Development in Electronics (1983) and Gold-Medal Award of the Indian Geotechnical Society (1976).
Dr. Bhatkar is a member of several leading national and international professional societies and task forces, holding active positions in many of them.
In honoring Dr. Vijay P. Bhatkar, we recognize the conspicuous contributions made by an alumnus of IIT Delhi as an outstanding technologist and able administrator who has earned recognition in India and abroad, and through achievement brought glory to the name of the Institute.
