IIEST gets its first full-time director

KOLKATA: Partha Chakraborty from the electronics department at IITBHU was on Tuesday appointed the first full-time director at IIEST,

Shibpur

. He will succeed Ajay Ray, who became the vice-chancellor in 2009, when the institute was still Bengal Engineering and Science University (Besu), and later, the director in March 2014, when the technology college was upgraded to Central-run IIEST.

The change in guard took place a day after Ray wrote to the ministry of human resources development, stating that his poor health would prevent him from taking on further responsibility. The ministry had kept Ray among the six shortlisted names for the director’s post but Chakraborty was finally selected.

Chakraborty confirmed over phone that he had received his appointment letter but added that he would first have to complete his teaching assignments and academic commitments at BHU before taking over the charge of the Shibpur campus. “I have received my appointment letter for the position of the IIEST, Shibpur director and am extremely happy. But I don’t think I will be able to take charge before the end of April, by which time I will try to wrap up the ongoing semester and also some academic commitments I have here. Even at Shibpur, I would like to teach and be part of academics over and above my administrative responsibilities,” he said.

From Kolkata, Chakraborty completed a large part of his education here. Earlier, he held another key administrative position when he was the director of Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), Allahabad. As an electronics engineering faculty member at IIT BHU, Chakrabarti contributed significantly to experimental and theoretical research in the areas of microelectronics and photonics. He was the coordinator of the

Centre for Research in Microelectronics

and the founder-coordinator of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) Centre, both at BHU. His research group has strong collaborations with the

Optoelectronics Research

group, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK and the Nanomaterials research group, University of New South Wales, Australia.

Citing his reason for not willing to continue with the Shibpur position, Chakraborty’s predecessor Ray stated that the nine long years of his tenure had taken a toll on his health. The campus had been on the boil with teachers making several demands, many of which Ray could not fulfil because of his “caretaker” status.

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