Pavagada Venkata Indiresan (1928–2013) was an Indian engineer, educationist, and administrator. He served as Director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Madras during 1979-1984. He was professor at IIT

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

during 1965-1979 and 1987-1993. He did his Ph.D. from the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...

. He served as president,

Indian National Academy of Engineering The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), founded in 1987, comprises India's engineers, engineer-scientists and technologists covering the entire spectrum of engineering disciplines. The Academy is registered under the Societies Reg ...

, New Delhi, India. He was named an Honorary Member of IEEE in 1998 "for contributions to the growth of electrical engineering in India through his leadership in education, applied research and professional engineering institutions." He was the Ph.D. supervisor of

Avinash Kak Avinash C. Kak (born 1944) is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University who has conducted pioneering research in several areas of information processing. His most noteworthy contributions deal with algorithms, langu ...

Subhash Kak Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal N ...

, and Arogyaswami Paulraj. He received the

Padma Bhushan The Padma Bhushan is the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, preceded by the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan and followed by the Padma Shri. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is given for "distinguished service ...

award in 2000. He challenged in court the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

's decision to reserve seats in the IITs for

Other Backward Class The Other Backward Class is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify castes which are educationally or socially backward. It is one of several official classifications of the population of India, along with General castes, ...

es in central educational institutions under the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 For many years he wrote a column on science and technology for ''

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

s ''Businessline''.

References

1928 births 2010s deaths Indian Institute of Science alumni IIT Delhi faculty IIT Madras faculty Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in science & engineering {{India-academic-bio-stub