Archana Kumar, 1995 Petroleum Engineering (PE) batch, is currently heading the Petroleum Engineering team of Leap Energy, Malaysia. She moved to Malaysia in 2010 and since then have been working as an oil industry consultant petroleum engineer. Prior to that, Archana has worked with ONGC (India) for 12 years. She has worked on projects in various countries like India, Australia, Iran, Oman, Kuwait, Romania, UK and most of the South East Asian countries. While at work, her passion for higher studies and feeling of stagnation at work led her journey to Stanford University, USA during 2008-10. She is a proud Stanford graduate with master’s degree in Petroleum Engineering. She is happily living in Kuala Lumpur with her husband, also ISM 1995 PE batch, and two sons Abhimanyu and Aryaman.

Before admitting to ISM or IIT(ISM) as it called now, Archana wanted to become a mathematician and did not consider engineering as a career option for women those days, let alone one from a mining school. Thankfully, she did not miss mathematics at all while doing Petroleum Engineering. ISM was tough in terms of social and environment life, but all the strength gained those days are still helping her as a bold international expatriate woman engineer in the oil industry and travel all around the world without fear and hesitation. Stanford happened quite late in her life, but she took it as a challenge and completed her masters successfully while her husband took care of their sons in Shell camp Nigeria.

ISM community served Archana with an international immediate family everywhere she travelled and never felt alone. Throughout her career, everyone she met inspired her in some way or the other. Life is good, and the world looks beautiful because of such people. She has been blessed with very good mentors, colleagues and friends throughout her career and hardly faced any issue as a woman engineer in the international oil industry or elsewhere. She has put her heart and soul into the career with her family’s full support. Many women engineers may not be as lucky as she is in having a smooth sail through their career. She shares her wisdom to young women engineers to “Never underestimate your potential, you are the best always, age no bar. Be the person you want to be and not a mere follower”.

मरुभूमि में एक बीज गिरा,
लिया धरती का उसने आँचल थाम,
एक माँ सा उसको प्यार मिला,
अल्प वर्षा से पनप उठा इक शाम,

माटी चीर वो ऊपर उठा,
जितना ऊपर उतना नीचे बढ़ा,
दो सुकोमल पत्ते उसके,
तेज़ हवाओं में थरथराते थे,

पर जड़ों का दम-ख़म देख,
कभी इरादे न डगमगाते थे,
ऋतुयें बदली, सावन बीते,
कई बसंत आये और आकर पार हुए,

उस अंकुर को मिटाने सृष्टि के,
सारे षड़यंत्र बेकार हुए,
धरा और पानी उसके सेनानी,
जिनके सहारे आ गयी जवानी,

वृक्ष बना वो वीरां रण का,
वृहद्-विशाल अब उसका कद था,
भूमि और तब हुई दयाला,
नयी कोपलों ने अपना सर निकला,

वट वृक्ष के साए में बढ़ती,
नयी ऊंचाइयों को छूने वो चढ़ती,
उन पुष्प-लताओं का वृक्ष सहारा,
उन्होंने वृक्ष का रूप संवारा,

वृक्ष पे एक गौरैया भी आई,
चेह्चहाई और वृक्ष की शान बढ़ाई,
गाती थी वो निर्मल स्वर में,
उल्लास झूलता अब उस आँगन में,

जिजीविषा की हठ ने जिसे पाला,
बदली जिसने मरुस्थल की विचार धारा,
ताकत-सौंदर्य का अदभुत नज़ारा,
बंजर भूमि का मैं वट-वृक्ष तिहरा.

~तुषार

About the author: Tushar Gupta is passionate about Hindi poetry. He is currently working towards his Ph.D. at University of Kentucky. He graduated with B.Tech from Indian School of Mines in 2012 and M.S. from University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2016 in Mining Engineering.

Distinguished Service Award and SME President Citation Award
Dr Abani R Samal holds PhD from SIU Carbondale, DIC & MS degree from Imperial College, London and M Tech (Mineral Exploration) degree from IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, India. He is in mining industry since 1996. Currently he is the principal and owner of GeoGlobal, LLC and providing consulting services to exploration and mining companies worldwide. Mineral deposit evaluation, applied geostatistics and mine-mill reconciliation are his technical specializations. He also provides training programs to industry professionals and academic researchers.

Abani R Samal is a Registered Member of SME. For past several years he has been active in several standing committees (Research Committee, GPAC and award committees), strategic committees (EPDSC and Products and Services) of SME. He is the Past Chair of the industrial minerals and aggregates division. Dr Samal is an active contributing member of the Resource and Reserve committee of SME. Dr Samal is a representative of CRIRSCO for India.

Neel Gupta, a doctoral student in the Department of Mining Engineering at West Virginia University, is one of the SME’s Syd S. and Felicia F. Peng Ground Control in Mining Scholarship recipients for 2018. The fellowship award is $5,000. He has also received the SME-WAAIME scholarship for the academic year 2015-2016 and 2016-2017. He graduated from Indian School of Mines Dhanbad with the Dual Degree (B.Tech + M.Tech) in Mining Engineering in the year 2015. He also studied at Aalto University, Finland as one semester exchange student. His doctoral research is the identification of fundamental mechanism, responsible for the time-dependent deformation of shale in underground coal mines.

Congratulations to below recipients for securing scholarships award from SME:

• Coal and Energy Division Scholarship: Rishabh Pratap Singh Gurjar
• John Sidney Marshall Scholarship: Prashant Kashyap, Shikhar Singh, Vikrant Verma, Shivam Singh, Akash, and Prashant Dev Ratrey

The event took place at 6:30 PM on February 26, 2018 at Dancing Ganesha restaurant. Most of us (also SME attendees) gathered at Hilton Hotel lobby and took a few minutes walk in nice cold winter to Dancing Ganesha, where the IIT(ISM) get-together took place. We are doing these get-togethers since 2008 (first social event was in Salt Lake City), so this was our 10th social event in continuation.

Vishal Gupta welcomed everyone. The event followed by formal introduction in ISM way. The group celebrated awards given to ISMites during SME meeting at different events – IMAD division Distinguished Service and SME President Citation award to Abani Samal, SME’s Syd S. and Felicia F. Peng prestigious scholarship award to Neel Gupta and other SME scholarship awards to current IIT(ISM) students. Vishal apprised the alumni of various efforts for scholarships and other activities taken up by ISM alumni association of North America.

It was indeed a joyous occasion, and everyone enjoyed the social get-together. It’s just once a year that we all get-together during SME meeting, alumni come from different states and sometime even travel as far from India to attend this conference and making this evening more special.

With this, I would like to thank alumni to take some time out to celebrate ISMite get-together to cherish the glorious days of IIT(ISM) during SME meeting. It was always a pleasure to have support from senior-most alumni Dr. Madan Singh sir (1956). A special thanks to Raghav Dube who did the hard work finding a place, menu and now our official treasurer for such events.