Professor Mayuresh V. Kothare, Department Chairman and the R. L. McCann Professor has won the 2020 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay. Professor Kothare was one among seven alumni who were recognized in 2020. IIT Bombay confers the Distinguished Alumnus Awards (DAA) every year to those who have reached positions of eminence in the areas of Business, Academics, Research, Government, Public Service and Entrepreneurship. These individuals would have "distinguished themselves in their fields of work and done the Institute proud".
Dr. Kothare received his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1991 where he was Institute Silver Medalist. Dr. Kothare then received his MS (1995) and PhD (1997) from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), both in Chemical Engineering, with a specialization in Control and Dynamical Systems. At Caltech, Dr. Kothare studied under the guidance of Prof. Manfred Morari, a world-renowned figure in the field of Dynamics and Control Systems. Following his PhD, Dr. Kothare held a postdoctoral scientist position at Mobil Oil Corporation in Paulsboro, NJ for one year. At Mobil, Dr. Kothare studied the use of detailed reaction kinetics models in the large-scale economic optimization of entire petrochemical plants in a platform called Real Time Optimization (RTO), involving the simultaneous solution of nearly a million equations with a million unknown variables, amongst the largest such numerical optimization problems to be solved in the industry at that time. Following this postdoctoral experience, he started his academic career as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Lehigh University in 1998. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, with tenure, in 2003, to the rank of Professor in 2008 and was appointed Chairman of Lehigh University’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department in 2012.
Dr. Kothare has held various visiting appointments at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich (1994-1996), in Electrical Engineering at Purdue University (1995), at City College New York (1996-97) in Chemical Engineering, at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (sabbatical leave 2008-2009) and at East China U. of Science and Technology, Shanghai as a distinguished Guest Professor in Automation and Control (2012-2015).
Dr. Kothare has received a number of recognitions for his research that include: various named professorships at Lehigh University (P. C. Rossin Assistant Professor, Frank Hook Assistant Professor, Class of 1961 Associate Professor, R. L. McCann Professorship); Lehigh's Alfred Nobel Robinson Award, NSF CAREER award; AIChE CAST division Ted Peterson Award for graduate publication; AIChE CAST division Outstanding Young Researcher Award (under 40 years); Election to IEEE Fellow (2012) and AIChE Fellow (2018), included in the list of most-cited Researchers in Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Shanghai Global Ranking (2016) and has delivered several plenary/keynote lectures.
Established in 1958 and the second of its kind, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay is recognized as a worldwide leader in the field of engineering education and research. Reputed for the outstanding caliber of students graduating from its undergraduate and postgraduate programs, the institute attracts the best students from the country for its bachelor's, master's and doctoral programs. In the most recent QS World University Rankings by subject for 2020, IIT Bombay was ranked first in India in engineering, number 50 in the world in the subject area of Chemical Engineering and number 44 in the world in the subject area of engineering and technology. Among all universities in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), IIT Bombay was ranked number 8.
IIT Bombay alumni number more than 35000. Among the very large number of notable alumni from IIT Bombay who have created global impact include -- Nandan Nilekani (co-founder of Infosys), Victor Menezes (Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup), Ashish Chauhan (CEO of Bombay Stock Exchange), Kanwal Rekhi (ex-chairman of Citicorp), etc.