Exchange Diaries  

By International Relations Cell

SGRIP 2017-18

Dr. Murugappa Krishnan

Teaches at Camden Business School, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA and is as Professor of Accounting and Finance at William Paterson University, New Jersey, USA.

Research Interests: Accounting and Information Economics, Asset Pricing with Private Information, Indian Financial Markets

  • Dr. Krishnan has worked extensively in the role of information in asset pricing and microstructure of financial markets
  • His research work has appeared in top-tier journals including Econometrica, RAND Journal of Economics, Economic Letters, Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, International Journal of Forecasting and International Journal of Production Economics
  • His recent work emphasizes the significance of private information in asset pricing and market behaviour
  • He has also contributed to financial economics literature on institutional herding in stock markets

Host: Dr. Saswat Das, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences IIT Kharagpur, India

Contribution:

  • As part of the SGR International Faculty Outreach Programme (SGRIP), Dr. Krishnan delivered a lecture series of 20 hours duration on “Asset Pricing in Financial Markets: Role of Private Information” during 22 June – 6 July, 2017
  • Conducted two short workshops with research scholars on empirical asset pricing framework with data from Indian financial market
  • Held discussions with the faculty members of VGSoM and interested students for possible collaborative research work

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Dr. Nicholas Tampio

Dr. Nicholas Tampio is an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, New York, USA. Dr. Tampio works on the history of political thought, contemporary political theory, and education policy. He is the author of Kantian Courage: Advancing the Enlightenment in Contemporary Political Theory (2012), Deleuze’s Political Vision (2015), and Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy (2018)

Research Interests: Immanuel Kant, Gilles Deleuze, John Dewey, democratic political theory, Islamic political thought, education policy

At IIT Kharagpur in 2018, Dr. Tampio delivered lectures to Dr. Saswat Das’s course:

  • January 11 on democracy and national education standards
  • January 12 on globalectics, democracy, and philosophy
  • January 15 on John Dewey’s vision of democracy
  • January 16 on BR Ambedkar’s thinking about democracy and religion
  • January 17 on Hu Shih’s thinking about democracy and religion
  • January 18 on John Dewey’s thinking about democracy and religion

Host: Dr. Saswat Das, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur, India

Contribution:

Dr. Tampio engaged in a dialogue with visiting professors:

  • January 16 and17 with Dr. Ajay Gudavarthy on democracy and populism
  • January 16 and17 with Dr. B. S. Chimni on democracy and international law
  • January 18 with Dr. Chandrakala Padia on women and democracy
  • January 15-18 with Dr. Anindya Sekhar Purakaystha on many topics, including Indian politics

Takeaways:

  • Dr. Tampio is preparing his lectures into an article that he will submit to a top political theory journal
  • Dr. Tampio has invited Dr. Saswat Das to submit an article on Sri Aurobindo to the journal ‘Politics and Religion’(Cambridge University Press), where he is an editor. The article would have to pass peer review, but Dr. Tampio thinks this is a promising research area
  • Dr. Tampio has offered to write a letter of recommendation for Dr. Das to pursue a Fulbright in the US. Dr. Tampio has also invited Dr. Saswat Das to speak about Indian political thought to his global justice seminar at Fordham University. These possibilities would require Dr. Das to send a working draft of a research paper
  • Dr. Tampio continues to be in regular touch with many of those he met at IIT Kharagpur

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Dr. Yoginder P. Chugh

Professor Emeritus and Visiting Professor in the Department of Mining and Mineral Resources Engineering, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois

Research Areas: Rock mechanics and ground control, dust control in underground coal mines, Mine reclamation and backfilling with fly ash, Mine production engineering

Host: Dr. Debasis Deb, Department of Mining Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India

Contribution:

  • Taught 50% of “Ground Control in Mining” course to undergraduate and post-graduate students
  • Conducted 5-day short course on “Ground Control for Design, Production, and Safety in underground Mining”
  • Delivered 4 lectures on “Research Methods for Scientists and Engineers”
  • Work with faculty members to enhance their research and scholarly activities

Awards and Honors:

  • Excellence in Education Award (2017) Pittsburgh Mining Institute of America
  • Fellow (2016) National Academy of Inventors, USA
  • The Percy Nicholls Award, 2016
  • The Health and Safety Excellence Award, 2015
  • The prestigious Old Timers Club Faculty Award, 2013
  • The Distinguished Member, 2011
  • The Rock Mechanics Award, 2009
  • The Howard N. Eavenson Award, 2009
  • Fulbright Senior Specialist Award, 2006
  • Outstanding Scholar Award, College of Engineering, 2005

Takeaways:

  • Enhanced industry involvement with the unit for future research and information transfer activities
  • Encouraged use of ground control in mines to improve productivity and safety in mining operations
  • Taught use of ground control software to design partial extraction and longwall mining systems
  • Discussed alternate mining designs for enhanced productivity and safety
  • Introduced fundamentals of research methods to research scholars and increased appreciation for research

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Dr. Salvatore Graziani

Dr. Graziani is now working as an Associate Professor in University of Catania, Italy

Research Areas: Fractional order element development and ionic polymer development

Host: Dr. Karabi Biswas, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India

Contribution:

  • Dr. S Grazianni gave a presentation on “Nano Structured Polymeric Materials as Fractional Order Element” to the workshop FOS’18 conducted in Electrical Engineering Department during 16 – 20 February, 2018
  • Meeting with the research students of the Electrical Engineering Department
  • Meeting with Dr. Karabi Biswas and Dr. Siddhartha Mukhopadhyay of Electrical Engineering to draft the future collaboration plan
  • Definition of the studies on organic polymer based FOE
  • Meeting with Dr. Susanta Banerjee of the Material Science Centre and visit to the Material Science Centre and the different labs under CRF for future collaboration

Takeaways:

  • Will continue to collaborate with IIT Kharagpur on the field of polymeric transducers

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Dr. Riccardo Caponetto

Dr. Riccardo Caponetto is now working as an Associate Professor at University of Catania, Italy

Research Interests: Fractional order systems development and Fractional order control theory and application

Host: Dr. Karabi Biswas, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India

Contribution:

  • Presentation on “FO-PID controller: stability, regions, design and implementation” to the workshop FOS’18 conducted at the Electrical Engineering Department during 16 – 20 February, 2018
  • Meeting with the research students of the Electrical Engineering Department
  • Meeting with Dr. Karabi Biswas and Dr. Siddhartha Mukhopadhyay of Electrical Engineering to draft the future collaboration plan
  • Definition of the studies on organic polymer based FOE
  • Meeting with Dr. Susanta Banerjee of the Material Science Centre and visit to the Material Science Centre and the different labs under CRF for future collaboration

Takeaways:

  • Will continue collaborating on the activities developed in Catania University on fractional order controller with the researchers and students of IIT Kharagpur
  • Will take further step for processing the Memorandum of Understanding between the two institutes

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Dr. Raphael Tackx

During my visit at IIT Kharagpur from 02 March - 15 April, 2017 I worked with Dr. Bivas Mitra, Dr. Niloy Ganguly, Dr. Animesh Mukherjee and Dr. Soumajit Pramanik on studies for the development of community detection methods in the field of multilayer networks

  • Together, we established a model to partition networks into several layers
  • To do so, we relied on a well-known quality function called modularity created few years ago
  • Modularity was designed to measure the strength of division of a single layer network into modules
  • Thus, our main goal was to adapt the latter for networks consisting of several layers

Host: Dr. Bivas Mitra, Dr. Niloy Ganguly, Dr. Animesh Mukherjee, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India

Contribution:

  • We as a team proposed a new formula capable to incorporate new topology features, such as several types of nodes and links and different null models (intra-layer and cross-layer)
  • Furthermore, we also developed a synthetic network generator useful to test our modularity
  • Thanks to several input parameters, synthetic networks allowed us to vary topologies in order to evaluate our work.
  • Finally, we also experimented our new metric on real-world datasets, such as Yelp and Meet up, and showed that we obtained consistent results

Takeaways:

  • Actually, our work is currently waiting for acceptance at DSAA’2017

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Mr. Sudeep Kumar Sahoo

Ph.D. scholar working on Deformation behavior and texture evolution in Magnesium alloys under supervision of Dr. Somjeet Biswas in Department of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, IIT Kharagpur.

Host: LabEx DAMAS, University of Lorraine, Metz, France

Contribution:

  • He was treated as PhD research fellow in France and was provided equivalent research stipendium of a regular PhD scholar in France
  • Gained deep understanding of the fundamentals of ‘Crystal plasticity model’
  • He studied Dr. Toth’s newly developed ‘Grain refinement model’ and used these on the experiments he conducted at IIT Kharagpur
  • He carried out the simulation work on volume transfer scheme of crystal plasticity modelling during twinning based deformation behavior of Mg alloys
  • He carried out the simulation work on Visco-plastic Self Consistent code for deformation behavior of metals and alloys
  • He was trained to use ATOM and JTEX, a powerful tool for texture analysis. These tools are being recently developed by a Team of people from the University of Lorraine, Metz, France such as Dr. Benoit Beasuir, Dr. Jean Jacques Fudenberger as well as Dr. Laszlo Toth

Takeaways:

  • These simulation codes are going to be a part in his PhD thesis
  • At least 4 international publications could be expected from this visit
  • Mr. Sahoo got opportunity to meet and interact with world renowned professors, scientists in the field of microstructure and crystallographic texture

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