IIIT-H Prof Pradeep K Ramancharla elected V-P (South) of IAStructE

Hyderabad: IIIT-Hyderabad's Prof Pradeep K Ramancharla has been elected Vice President (South) of Indian Association of Structural Engineers. As Vice President of IAStructE, Prof. Pradeep K. Ramancharla will be involved in expanding the Association's reach across Southern India, covering Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

A Professor of Civil Engineering, Prof. Ramancharla is well known for his contributions in improving the quality of technical education and earthquake safety in India as he heads the Earthquake Engineering Research Center at IIIT -Hyderabad. He has held various positions at the institute since 2002, is responsible for launching the M.Tech and Ph.D programmes in Structural Engineering at the institute and is currently also the Registrar of IIIT-H.

Prof. Ramancharla brings a rare combination in India of an engineer trained in seismic hazard assessment, with a global view of both seismic hazard and seismic resistance capacity of buildings. This places him in a unique leadership position in India, which is evident from the number of requests that he has from various governments to support them in seismic risk assessment of the built environment.

Speaking on being unanimously elected as VP of IAStructE, Prof. Ramancharla said, "Structural engineering is the backbone of engineering design of buildings, lifeline structures, etc. Hence, I would like to focus my energy on bringing stakeholders in academia, government and industry towards safe, affordable and environmentally sustainable built environment."

The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) is an autonomous research university founded in 1998, that focuses on the core areas of Information Technology, such as Computer Science, Electronics and Communications, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research with great social impact. Some of its research domains include Visual Information Technologies, Human Language Technologies, Data Engineering, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Wireless Communications, Algorithms and Information Security, Robotics, Building Science, Earthquake Engineering, Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, Education Technologies, Power Systems, IT in Agriculture and e-Governance.