48 years old IIT, Kanpur professor Sanjay Mittal was awarded the G D Birla award for scientific research, for 2016. He is a professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering in IIT, Kanpur.

The K K Birla Foundation said in a statement that Prof. Sanjay Mittal was chosen for his contribution in the areas of mechanics. Mittal has made a brilliant contribution to the development of finite element algorithms for high-performance computing (HPS). Most importantly he has worked in the significant topic of  Bluff Body Flows (flows past blunt bodies associated with large unsteady separation and leading to large fluid forces). He is among a very few people in India who have worked on and used Finite Element Analysis for fluid flows.

He used instruments to establish HPC facility, primarily founded by DST, at IIT, Kanpur. He completed B.Tech from this institute in 1988 after which he got enrolled at The University of Minnesota for MS Program. There he received his Ph.D. and worked as a research associate under Prof Tayfun E Tezduyar. After working for two years at Army High-Performance Computing Centre, he returned to India and joined IIT-Kanpur in 1994 as an Assistant Professor.

Mittal has also been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology. G D Birla Award for Scientific Research, instituted in 1991, seeks to recognise Indian scientists aged below 50 living and working in India for their outstanding contribution to any branch of science and technology. It carries a cash prize of Rs 2.5 lakh.

By Prakriti Neogi