Date of birth: 1 July 1946

Professor Emeritus

Department of Civil Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

Powai, Mumbai-400 076, INDIA

Telephones: Office (022) 2576 7310

Secretary(022) 2576 7301

Home(022) 2577 1090

Mobile: 0 996 916 4646

0 975 717 7990

Telefax: (022) 2576 7302

E-mail : tkant@civil.iitb.ac.in

Tarun Kantwas born on 1 July 1946 at Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, India. He received his BSc degree from the University of Allahabad in 1962, his BTech (Hons) in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) in 1967 and MTech in civil engineering with specialization in structural engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) in 1969. He spent about one and a half year in a consulting engineering firm in Mumbai before joining IIT Bombay on 20 January1971 as a Lecturer. He earned his PhD degree while working as a Lecturer from IIT Bombay in 1977. He was selected as an Assistant Professor in 1978 and a Professor in 1986. He has held the positions of the Department Head (2000-2002), the Dean (Planning) of the Institute (2001-2003), the Chairman of the prestigious Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-1998) and the Chairman of the Central Library (1995-1999) with great distinction. He initiated and introduced many innovations effectively during his tenure. The Institute appointed him as an Institute Chair Professor from 31^st December 2009. He was re-employed by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) of Government of India (GOI) for five years until 30 June 2016 though he formally retired (superannuated) on 30 June 2011. The Institute honoured him with the title of Professor Emeritus for life on 27 September 2017.

Prof. Kant was elected a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) in 1999, a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc) in 2004, a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 2007 and a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) in 2011. He is the first civil engineer in the country to get elected to all the four national academies.

He has been visiting professors at University of Wales, Swansea (1979-82), University of Cambridge (1993) and University of California, Los Angeles (2005).

He is a recipient of the Burmah-Shell Best Paper Prize. He was awarded the 1979 Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust (U.K) Scholarship and the 1992-93 European Commission (EC) Senior Faculty Exchange Fellowship, both by the Government of India. IIT-Bombay, on 13 March 2007, conferred the 2006 Professor H.H. Mathur Award for Excellence in Research in Applied Sciences in recognition of his outstanding work in the area of Mechanics of Composite Materials and Structures. He also received the 2009 Khosla National Award for his life time achievement in the field of engineering. He is also a recipient of the 2010 IIT Bombay Research Paper Award. IIT Bombay, on 4^th April 2012, conferred on him the 2011 Life Time Achievement Award. ICCS17 (17^th International Conference on Composite Structures, Porto, Portugal, 17-21 June 2013) honoured him by calling him a legend and recognized him as a pioneer in initiating a new direction in mechanics of composites. He received the APACM Senior Scientist Award of the Asia Pacific Association of Computational Mechanics (APACM) on 12 December 2013 during APCOM2013 in Singapore. Received the ICCES (International Conference on Computational and Experimental Engineering and Sciences) Lifetime Achievement Award - 2015 Medal in Reno, Nevada, USA on 23 July 2015 for making seminal contributions to composite materials and to the education of generations of students in India. Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani also honoured him with Life Time Achievement Award on 26 February 2018.

He has published more than 155 research papers in refereed journals, 6 chapters in edited books, about 167 papers in conference proceedings, edited 4 books and currently serves on the editorial boards of 5 international journals in diverse areas of computational structural mechanics. He has supervised 27 PhD theses and over 77 MTech dissertations. He has Research & Citation Standing in terms of h-index of 34 on Web of Science (38 on Scopus, 40 on GoogleScholar). His current citations are over 3551 on Web of Science (over 4617 on Scopus, 6094 on GoogleScholar).

He has carried out 12 sponsored projects and has authored about 21 unpublished reports. He has edited a set of two volumes entitled Finite Elements in Computational Mechanics, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1985 (ISBN 0-08-031682-2) and has co-edited another volume entitled Advances in Structural Engineering, Quest Publications, Mumbai, 2000 (ISBN 81-87099-08-9).

He served a term on the editorial board of Computational Mechanics An International Journal and currently serves on editorial boards of 5 international journals: Structural Engineering & Mechanics - An International Journal [Techno-Press], International Journal for Computational Methods in Engineering Science and Mechanics (CMESM) [Taylor & Francis], Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences (CMES) [Tech Science Press], Advances in Civil Engineering [Hindawi Publishing Corp.] and International Journal of Computational Methods [World Scientific]. He was Editor of Advances in Civil Engineering and Editor of Engineering & Technology Section of the Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy (ProcINSA).

He is responsible for establishing a research Centre for Computational Engineering and Science (CCES) at IIT-Bombay which has influenced many of his colleagues as well. He was elected President of the Indian Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ISTAM) for two terms (1999 and 2000), has founded Indian Association for Computational Mechanics (IndACM) and Indian Association for Structural Engineering (IASE) and is responsible for organization of biennial ICCMS (International Congress on Computational Mechanics and Simulation) and SEC (Structural Engineering Convention) congresses in the country. He was an INSA nominated Member on the National Committee of International Union of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) for two 3 year terms: July 2000-June 2003 and January 2008-December 2011. He was also a Member of the General Assembly of IUTAM until 2012. He was the Convener and Member of Engineering & Technology Sections of INSA and IASc, respectively.

He has created single-handedly an endowment fund of over Rupees One Crorefor the department through small contributions from civil engineering alumni, industry and well-wishers in a period of about 15 years for creation of an Endowed Chair. He was responsible for influencing the donor for creation of Mehta Chair in the department.

Through a Technology Transfer scheme of IIT Bombay, the outcome of his research on Composite Mechanics has been ported on PARAM systems of C-DAC Pune in the form of a computer code FEMCOMP which is being used by several organizations including IITs in the country and Russia.

He has been on the Advisory Panels of many national and international conferences.He has lectured at several universities and research institutions and has participated in numerous conferences and seminars both within and outside India.He was the Convener of a very successful International Conference on Finite Elements in Computational Mechanics held in 1985 (FEICOM-85) at Bombay. He was also General Chairman of SEC-2000: 2nd Structural Engineering Convention held on 5-8 January 2000 at IIT-Bombay and Chair of ICCMS09: 3^rd International Congress on Computational Mechanics & Simulation held on 1-5 December 2009 at IIT-Bombay. He is listed in several Who's Who in the World.

He is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineers (IE) and The Aeronautical Society of India (AeSI), a Member of International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) and Life Members of The Indian Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ISTAM) and Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE) and Founder Life Member of International Society for Computational Engineering and Science (ISCES), Indian Association for Computational Mechanics (IndACM) and Indian Association for Structural Engineering (IASE). He is also a nominated Fellow of The World Innovation Foundation (U.K).

His research interests lie in the areas of solid mechanics, plates, shells, fibre reinforced polymer composites, refined higher-order theories, thermal stresses, transient dynamics, finite element and other numerical methods, use of polymer composites in construction, mechanics of composite materials and structures & computational mechanics.

He is a consultant to many leading government and private organizations and serves on many national and state research/ advisory/ policy/ selection committees and is a member of several national and international bodies.