Roddam Narasimha: A Tribute

An eminent fluid dynamicist reminisces about her mentor’s many distinguishing qualities     On a bus journey long ago, I fell into a chance conversation with the enthusiastic high school student sitting next to me. She confided her dreams in me: she dearly wished to be a pilot. If this didn’t happen, she had a […]

The Race for Five Million Dollars

IISc-TCS was the only Indian team to compete in the Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge 2020   The competition was only a few days away. With one drone having crashed already, all eyes were locked nervously on the two drones over the airfield outside the Department of Aerospace Engineering. During the final testing at […]

A Martian Odyssey

  Ritu Karidhal completed her MTech from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IISc, in 2003. A senior scientist at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), she has participated in many of its critical missions, including the recent Chandrayaan-2. As a Deputy Operations Director, Karidhal played a key role in steering the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), […]

‘Ours was a small group, like one family’

Syed Ameenulla, who joined IISc as a lab assistant and went on to be a scientific officer, recalls his involvement in the Institute’s monsoon experiments In the monsoon of 1979, Chandipur beach in Balasore, Odisha was host to a small group of researchers from Bangalore. The team, from IISc and the National Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL), […]

Satish Dhawan: The Father of Experimental Fluid Dynamics in India

It was in 1946 that Dhawan arrived at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT, now Graduate Aerospace Laboratories), wanting to work with Hans Liepmann. But the Indian students Liepmann had worked with until then had given him the impression that “perhaps the select group that came to Caltech from India […]

A Centre Dedicated to the Jigsaw Puzzle of Hypersonic Research

In 2011, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) signed an MoU with BrahMos Aerospace to create a new centre for studying an exciting aspect of scientific research in today’s world: hypersonic flight. The Centre of Excellence for Hypersonics was inaugurated that year by APJ Abdul Kalam, former President of India and eminent aerospace scientist. Although […]