P K Das
Scoring centuries in all examinations of mathematics from class 1 to Matriculation board examination
in Brooke’s Hill primary to C S Zilla H S school, in Sambalpur town, of Orissa, now Odisha, till
1965, and awarded Keojhar Maharaja scholarship in class 8 Board in 1962 for 4 years and in
Matriculation Board for one year, mathematics has been my favourite subject besides Sanskrit. Proud
to add here that Dr. Pramod Kumar Mishra, IAS and the present Principal Secretary to the Prime
Minister of India, Narendra Modi ji, happened to be my class-mate from class 8 till Pre-University. It
was my mathematics subject in IIT Joint Entrance Examination, again a near century, after my Pre-
University Examination that I could reach IIT, Kharagpur for my B Tech engineering studies. I also
scored century in my M Tech mathematics in IIT. I derived difficult elliptic function equations in my
M Tech thesis for vibratory motion of soil-working tools and incomplete gamma function in light
manufacturing Aggregate Production Planning model of my PhD problem. I was awarded the Gold
medal for the best paper of the year at the XI Engineering Congress by Institution of Engineers (I)
held in 1995 at Bengaluru for my automatic computer model INTEX Integrated Extrapolative time-
series short-term forecasting for production scheduling. I was also adjudged the best researcher of the
year 2005 by Engineering Division of ICAR.
After a short stint of 3 years as Assistant Engineer in Govt. of Orissa, I spent the rest of
my research career under Indian Council of Agricultural Research from 1976 to 2009 with entry as
scientist in first batch of Agricultural Research Service formed thanks to Central Agriculture
Minister Hon’ble Jagjivan Ram and DG, ICAR Dr. M S Swaminathan with my initial posting at
Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. I then moved to the newly established Central
Institute of Agricultural Engineering (ICAR) under Prof. A C Pandya as its first Director in Bhopal in
1978 as Senior scientist within a couple of years through a lateral selection by Agricultural Scientists
Recruitment Board. I was Principal scientist for 22 years including Head of Technology Transfer
Division for 10 years, both at CIAE and 9 years at NIRJAFT (ICAR), Kolkata besides a short period
as Director (acting) of NIRJAFT. I had produced a dozen of Training manuals in book forms of 300+
pages each for engineers in the field of Agricultural Engineering. At NIRJAFT, my work on Jute card
led me to write a book “Jute Card, Design and Theory, for textile engineers. After my superannuation,

I joined TIT, a private engineering college in Bhopal, as Director of 3 of its 4 engineering institutes in
turn besides my position as Group Director of MBA College, all in the same campus.
Biswarup Das
Biswarup Das is a Gold Medallist in Electrical Engineering. He then did his full time MS from the
prestigious Purdue University, Lafayette and full time MBA from Indian Institute of Management –
Udaipur.
He currently lives in the Silicon Valley with his wife Ananya Ghosh and two boys – Onir and Ohon.
He has been a professional in the Technology Industry for the last 15 years having served leadership
positions across Accenture, DELL, and Hitachi Group.