20th September 2019: Dr. Samir V. Kamat, Director General, DRDO, New Delhi, delivered a University Distinguished Lecture on “Advanced Materials for future Defense Systems: A DRDO Perspective” for students, faculty members and research scholars. He began with a brief overview on the functioning of various DRDO labs around our country, activities and achievements in aeronautics, missile system, hypersonic, weapons, armour, naval and life support systems. He also spoke of current and future challenges inviting bright young minds at the university to take part in shaping the future.
As to advanced materials that DRDO looking for, Dr. Kamat spoke of high strength and self-healing composites, higher temperature and corrosion resistance materials for aeronautical & naval structures and light weight armour materials.
According to Dr. Kamat, advances in materials are fundamental enablers for defence system capabilities and to meet the needs of the sector. He pointed to new areas of focus such as computational materials & materials genome and additive manufacturing which he described as a future game changer in the field of materials.
Presentations were also delivered by faculty members, Dr. Sabyasachi Mukhopdaya, Dr. G. S. Vinod Kumar, Prof. Ranjit Thapa, who had presented their group works on Materials Science and Engineering, Computational materials and Centre for Materials Genome. Dr. Samir Kamat encouraged SRM-AP to move forward to establish in collaboration with DRDO a Centre for Additive Manufacturing and Centre for Materials Genome.
Dr. Samir V. Kamat received his B.Tech (Honours) in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1985 and Ph.D from Ohio State University in 1988. He is currently the Director General, Naval Systems and Materials, Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO). He has also served as a Scientist and Director at Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad where he worked on the development of various advanced materials for defence applications. He has published more than 185 papers in peer reviewed International Journals and has received several DRDO and National Level Awards. He is a Fellow of Indian Academy of Engineering (INAE) and Institution of Engineers, India (IEI)