Vishwanath Sinha

Prof. Sinha has 46 years of progressive professional experience in pedagogy, research and development, management, technical leadership, technology transfer, and organizational abilities. He has recently completed his tenure as the Founding Director of the LNM Institute of Information Technology Jaipur, set up as a public-private partnership collaborative venture of the Government of Rajasthan and the Foundation of the Steel Baron Mr. L. N. Mittal. Major part of his professional career has been at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. He joined the Institute in 1971 after his DSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He held the position of the Deputy Director of the Institute for the longest period (more than six years) in which position he had on number of occasions carried out the duties and responsibilities of the Chief Executive of the Institute for extended periods. He also has the experience of working in Europe, South America as well as in North America; as a researcher at the Brazilian Space Research Institute, Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo; Nuclear Research Institute, Ljubljana and as a visiting faculty at University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus, U.S.A., RWTH - Technical University of Aachen, Germany and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland. His industrial interactions past and present are in the forms of directorship on the Board of Directors of BELTRON Mining Systems Ltd., producing electronics and communication equipment for mining applications; Advisory Research and Development Council membership of HTL, Hindustan Teleprinters Ltd., producing teleprinters and line equipment for data transmission etc.; membership of the governing Council of ER&DC (Electronics R&D Council) North Zone which with UPTRON, Lucknow was involved in application-oriented research, design and development for electronics in railways, computer workstations and computer networks; directorship of UPTRON India Ltd., the largest public sector undertaking in Uttar Pradesh producing consumer electronics as well as digital systems and equipment and chairmanship and directorship of UPTEC Computer Consultancy Ltd. He was on the Council of the Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala as a nominee of the UGC, as well as on the Finance Committee of the erstwhile University of Roorkee. As a Principal Coordinator of the Quality Improvement Programme he was instrumental in designing curricula for engineering colleges on behalf of the HRD. He has been one of the pioneers for the telematics education in the country and was the National Co-ordinator of the MHRD/AICTE sponsored Telematics Project, which used to run at the five IITs and IISc Bangalore. He proved to be an able administrator at IIT Kanpur where he provided academic leadership and helped the Institute to grow. Dr. Sinha is also very active in professional society activities. He has served as a member of the Council of the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) and was Chairman/Co-airman of Council Committees. He steered a position paper on the Science and Technology Policy document for the consideration of the Government. He has also been the Chairman of the Institution of Engineers (India) Kanpur Local Centre; Chairman, IETE Kanpur Local Centre and the Chairman of IEEE UP Section. He had organized the 10th International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC 07) in 2007 in Jaipur as its General Chair, a Conference which came to India for the first time and had attracted participation from 38 countries. He is a fellow of IETE; Institution of Engineers (India), a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Life Member of Indian Society for Technical Education.