Dear ISMAANA members:

We wish happy holidays to all our alumni. May the new year bring fulfillment of your fondest wishes.

ISMAANA continues to work on many projects to assist our alma mater as well as our North America based alumni. During the last academic year (2018-19), 38 merit cum means scholarships were awarded to IIT (ISM) students. Twenty-nine students are carrying over their scholarships to the new academic year (2019-20). Selection of 23 remaining scholarships are currently underway for a total of 52 merit cum means scholarships to be awarded in the current year.

This is in addition to 8 merit scholarship being awarded to eight fourth-year students in four earth science branches based on their academic performance during the first 3 years. More details are provided under ISMAANA scholarship programs.

Work has started to build an innovation and tinkering lab at IIT (ISM). Naresh Vashisht (PE’67) has generously agreed to fund this project estimated to cost $1.2 million. A detailed announcement of the project is provided in this newsletter.

Dr. Piyush Dutta (60’Mining) has instituted an annual Innovation prize of Rs. 1 lakh at IIT (ISM) for the student who develops and prototypes the best original idea in the Mining technologies. The process for such selection has already started.

IIT (ISM) alumni in North America alumni had several gatherings around the country. We meet on different occasions to develop fellowship among alumni and to strengthen bonds between us and with our alma mater. We have provided coverage of such gatherings in this newsletter

ISMAANA newsletter is being published on a regular basis to exchange communication with our North America based alumni. Our thanks to Vishal Gupta, Secretary, for this sincere effort.

An alumni database development program is ongoing for the last two years with dedicated efforts of Gaurav Seth. If you know of any alumnus who is not receiving our newsletter, please let Gaurav know at smile.gaurav@gmail.com.

We started a fund-raising program in 2018 to enhance our endowment funds to continue and expand the merit scholarship program and to fund outstanding research projects at our alma mater. Additional funds are also needed to help IIT (ISM) students attend international seminars and conferences. The scarcity of funds limits us from considering many such requests during the year. Many of you have already contributed to the alumni fund. We seek your continuous support to enhance the ISMAANA endowment fund. You may write your tax-deductible donation check to “Indian School of Mines Alumni” and send it to our treasurer Atul Kumar at 46 Huntsman Horn Circle, The Woodlands, TX 77380.

If you have any feedback to improve ISMAANA’s role or would like to contribute articles or news events or have any other comments, please send us a note.

Thank you.

Sincerely
Dipak Sarkar
President ISMAANA (’67 PE)
dksarkar@aol.com